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* [[Mein Kampf/Source Part 3]]
* [[Mein Kampf/Source Part 4]]
* [[Mein Kampf/Source Part 5]]
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species and the race, even though men may not be able consciously to
picture to their minds the profound motives of their conduct.
CHAPTER XI
RACE AND PEOPLE
There are certain truths which stand out so openly on the roadsides of
life, as it were, that every passer-by may see them. Yet, because of
their very obviousness, the general run of people disregard such truths
or at least they do not make them the object of any conscious knowledge.
People are so blind to some of the simplest facts in every-day life that
they are highly surprised when somebody calls attention to what
everybody ought to know. Examples of The Columbus Egg lie around us in
hundreds of thousands; but observers like Columbus are rare.
Walking about in the garden of Nature, most men have the self-conceit to
think that they know everything; yet almost all are blind to one of the
outstanding principles that Nature employs in her work. This principle
may be called the inner isolation which characterizes each and every
living species on this earth.
Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable
forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a
fundamental law--one may call it an iron law of Nature--which compels
the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own
life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal
mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with
the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the
field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse,
the wolf with the she-wolf, etc.
Deviations from this law take place only in exceptional circumstances.
This happens especially under the compulsion of captivity, or when some
other obstacle makes procreative intercourse impossible between
individuals of the same species. But then Nature abhors such intercourse
with all her might; and her protest is most clearly demonstrated by the
fact that the hybrid is either sterile or the fecundity of its
descendants is limited. In most cases hybrids and their progeny are
denied the ordinary powers of resistance to disease or the natural means
of defence against outer attack.
Such a dispensation of Nature is quite logical. Every crossing between
two breeds which are not quite equal results in a product which holds an
intermediate place between the levels of the two parents. This means
that the offspring will indeed be superior to the parent which stands in
the biologically lower order of being, but not so high as the higher
parent. For this reason it must eventually succumb in any struggle
against the higher species. Such mating contradicts the will of Nature
towards the selective improvements of life in general. The favourable
preliminary to this improvement is not to mate individuals of higher and
lower orders of being but rather to allow the complete triumph of the
higher order. The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker,
which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the
born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so
it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if
such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher
development of organic life would not be conceivable at all.
This urge for the maintenance of the unmixed breed, which is a
phenomenon that prevails throughout the whole of the natural world,
results not only in the sharply defined outward distinction between one
species and another but also in the internal similarity of
characteristic qualities which are peculiar to each breed or species.
The fox remains always a fox, the goose remains a goose, and the tiger
will retain the character of a tiger. The only difference that can exist
within the species must be in the various degrees of structural strength
and active power, in the intelligence, efficiency, endurance, etc., with
which the individual specimens are endowed. It would be impossible to
find a fox which has a kindly and protective disposition towards geese,
just as no cat exists which has a friendly disposition towards mice.
That is why the struggle between the various species does not arise from
a feeling of mutual antipathy but rather from hunger and love. In both
cases Nature looks on calmly and is even pleased with what happens. The
struggle for the daily livelihood leaves behind in the ruck everything
that is weak or diseased or wavering; while the fight of the male to
possess the female gives to the strongest the right, or at least, the
possibility to propagate its kind. And this struggle is a means of
furthering the health and powers of resistance in the species. Thus it
is one of the causes underlying the process of development towards a
higher quality of being.
If the case were different the progressive process would cease, and even
retrogression might set in. Since the inferior always outnumber the
superior, the former would always increase more rapidly if they
possessed the same capacities for survival and for the procreation of
their kind; and the final consequence would be that the best in quality
would be forced to recede into the background. Therefore a corrective
measure in favour of the better quality must intervene. Nature supplies
this by establishing rigorous conditions of life to which the weaker
will have to submit and will thereby be numerically restricted; but even
that portion which survives cannot indiscriminately multiply, for here a
new and rigorous selection takes place, according to strength and
health.
If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the
stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle
with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout
hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher
stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.
History furnishes us with innumerable instances that prove this law. It
shows, with a startling clarity, that whenever Aryans have mingled their
blood with that of an inferior race the result has been the downfall of
the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture. In North
America, where the population is prevalently Teutonic, and where those
elements intermingled with the inferior race only to a very small
degree, we have a quality of mankind and a civilization which are
different from those of Central and South America. In these latter
countries the immigrants--who mainly belonged to the Latin races--mated
with the aborigines, sometimes to a very large extent indeed. In this
case we have a clear and decisive example of the effect produced by the
mixture of races. But in North America the Teutonic element, which has
kept its racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial
stock, has come to dominate the American Continent and will remain
master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit
of adulterating its blood.
In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following:
(a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered;
(b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but
steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap.
The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will
of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged.
Man's effort to build up something that contradicts the iron logic of
Nature brings him into conflict with those principles to which he
himself exclusively owes his own existence. By acting against the laws
of Nature he prepares the way that leads to his ruin.
Here we meet the insolent objection, which is Jewish in its inspiration
and is typical of the modern pacifist. It says: "Man can control even
Nature."
There are millions who repeat by rote that piece of Jewish babble and
end up by imagining that somehow they themselves are the conquerors of
Nature. And yet their only weapon is just a mere idea, and a very
preposterous idea into the bargain; because if one accepted it, then it
would be impossible even to imagine the existence of the world.
The real truth is that, not only has man failed to overcome Nature in
any sphere whatsoever but that at best he has merely succeeded in
getting hold of and lifting a tiny corner of the enormous veil which she
has spread over her eternal mysteries and secret. He never creates
anything. All he can do is to discover something. He does not master
Nature but has only come to be the master of those living beings who
have not gained the knowledge he has arrived at by penetrating into some
of Nature's laws and mysteries. Apart from all this, an idea can never
subject to its own sway those conditions which are necessary for the
existence and development of mankind; for the idea itself has come only
from man. Without man there would be no human idea in this world. The
idea as such is therefore always dependent on the existence of man and
consequently is dependent on those laws which furnish the conditions of
his existence.
And not only that. Certain ideas are even confined to certain people.
This holds true with regard to those ideas in particular which have not
their roots in objective scientific truth but in the world of feeling.
In other words, to use a phrase which is current to-day and which well
and clearly expresses this truth: THEY REFLECT AN INNER EXPERIENCE. All
such ideas, which have nothing to do with cold logic as such but
represent mere manifestations of feeling, such as ethical and moral
conceptions, etc., are inextricably bound up with man's existence. It is
to the creative powers of man's imagination that such ideas owe their
existence.
Now, then, a necessary condition for the maintenance of such ideas is
the existence of certain races and certain types of men. For example,
anyone who sincerely wishes that the pacifist idea should prevail in
this world ought to do all he is capable of doing to help the Germans
conquer the world; for in case the reverse should happen it may easily
be that the last pacifist would disappear with the last German. I say
this because, unfortunately, only our people, and no other people in the
world, fell a prey to this idea. Whether you like it or not, you would
have to make up your mind to forget wars if you would achieve the
pacifist ideal. Nothing less than this was the plan of the American
world-redeemer, Woodrow Wilson. Anyhow that was what our visionaries
believed, and they thought that through his plans their ideals would be
attained.
The pacifist-humanitarian idea may indeed become an excellent one when
the most superior type of manhood will have succeeded in subjugating the
world to such an extent that this type is then sole master of the earth.
This idea could have an injurious effect only in the measure according
to which its application would become difficult and finally impossible.
So, first of all, the fight and then pacifism. If the case were
different it would mean that mankind has already passed the zenith of
its development, and accordingly the end would not be the supremacy of
some moral ideal but degeneration into barbarism and consequent chaos.
People may laugh at this statement; but our planet has been moving
through the spaces of ether for millions and millions of years,
uninhabited by men, and at some future date may easily begin to do so
again--if men should forget that wherever they have reached a superior
level of existence, it was not the result of following the ideas of
crazy visionaries but by acknowledging and rigorously observing the iron
laws of Nature.
All that we admire in the world to-day, its science, its art, its
technical developments and discoveries, are the products of the creative
activities of a few peoples, and it may be true that their first
beginnings must be attributed to one race. The maintenance of
civilization is wholly dependent on such peoples. Should they perish,
all that makes this earth beautiful will descend with them into the
grave.
However great, for example, be the influence which the soil exerts on
men, this influence will always vary according to the race in which it
produces its effect. Dearth of soil may stimulate one race to the most
strenuous efforts and highest achievement; while, for another race, the
poverty of the soil may be the cause of misery and finally of
undernourishment, with all its consequences. The internal
characteristics of a people are always the causes which determine the
nature of the effect that outer circumstances have on them. What reduces
one race to starvation trains another race to harder work.
All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the
originally creative race died out, as a result of contamination of the
blood.
The most profound cause of such a decline is to be found in the fact
that the people ignored the principle that all culture depends on men,
and not the reverse. In other words, in order to preserve a certain
culture, the type of manhood that creates such a culture must be
preserved. But such a preservation goes hand-in-hand with the inexorable
law that it is the strongest and the best who must triumph and that they
have the right to endure.
He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this
world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to
exist.
Such a saying may sound hard; but, after all, that is how the matter
really stands. Yet far harder is the lot of him who believes that he can
overcome Nature and thus in reality insults her. Distress, misery, and
disease are her rejoinders.
Whoever ignores or despises the laws of race really deprives himself of
the happiness to which he believes he can attain. For he places an
obstacle in the victorious path of the superior race and, by so doing,
he interferes with a prerequisite condition of all human progress.
Loaded with the burden of humanitarian sentiment, he falls back to the
level of those who are unable to raise themselves in the scale of being.
It would be futile to attempt to discuss the question as to what race or
races were the original standard-bearers of human culture and were
thereby the real founders of all that we understand by the word
humanity. It is much simpler to deal with this question in so far as it
relates to the present time. Here the answer is simple and clear. Every
manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and
technical skill, which we see before our eyes to-day, is almost
exclusively the product of the Aryan creative power. This very fact
fully justifies the conclusion that it was the Aryan alone who founded a
superior type of humanity; therefore he represents the architype of what
we understand by the term: MAN. He is the Prometheus of mankind, from
whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed
forth, always kindling anew that fire which, in the form of knowledge,
illuminated the dark night by drawing aside the veil of mystery and thus
showing man how to rise and become master over all the other beings on
the earth. Should he be forced to disappear, a profound darkness will
descend on the earth; within a few thousand years human culture will
vanish and the world will become a desert.
If we divide mankind into three categories--founders of culture, bearers
of culture, and destroyers of culture--the Aryan alone can be considered
as representing the first category. It was he who laid the groundwork
and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture. Only
the shape and colour of such structures are to be attributed to the
individual characteristics of the various nations. It is the Aryan who
has furnished the great building-stones and plans for the edifices of
all human progress; only the way in which these plans have been executed
is to be attributed to the qualities of each individual race. Within a
few decades the whole of Eastern Asia, for instance, appropriated a
culture and called such a culture its own, whereas the basis of that
culture was the Greek mind and Teutonic skill as we know it. Only the
external form--at least to a certain degree--shows the traits of an
Asiatic inspiration. It is not true, as some believe, that Japan adds
European technique to a culture of her own. The truth rather is that
European science and technics are just decked out with the peculiar
characteristics of Japanese civilization. The foundations of actual life
in Japan to-day are not those of the native Japanese culture, although
this characterizes the external features of the country, which features
strike the eye of European observers on account of their fundamental
difference from us; but the real foundations of contemporary Japanese
life are the enormous scientific and technical achievements of Europe
and America, that is to say, of Aryan peoples. Only by adopting these
achievements as the foundations of their own progress can the various
nations of the Orient take a place in contemporary world progress. The
scientific and technical achievements of Europe and America provide the
basis on which the struggle for daily livelihood is carried on in the
Orient. They provide the necessary arms and instruments for this
struggle, and only the outer forms of these instruments have become
gradually adapted to Japanese ways of life.
If, from to-day onwards, the Aryan influence on Japan would cease--and
if we suppose that Europe and America would collapse--then the present
progress of Japan in science and technique might still last for a short
duration; but within a few decades the inspiration would dry up, and
native Japanese character would triumph, while the present civilization
would become fossilized and fall back into the sleep from which it was
aroused about seventy years ago by the impact of Aryan culture. We may
therefore draw the conclusion that, just as the present Japanese
development has been due to Aryan influence, so in the immemorial past
an outside influence and an outside culture brought into existence the
Japanese culture of that day. This opinion is very strongly supported by
the fact that the ancient civilization of Japan actually became
fossilizied and petrified. Such a process of senility can happen only if
a people loses the racial cell which originally had been creative or if
the outside influence should be withdrawn after having awakened and
maintained the first cultural developments in that region. If it be
shown that a people owes the fundamental elements of its culture to
foreign races, assimilating and elaborating such elements, and if
subsequently that culture becomes fossilized whenever the external
influence ceases, then such a race may be called the depository but
never the creator of a culture.
If we subject the different peoples to a strict test from this
standpoint we shall find that scarcely any one of them has originally
created a culture, but almost all have been merely the recipients of a
culture created elsewhere.
This development may be depicted as always happening somewhat in the
following way:
Aryan tribes, often almost ridiculously small in number, subjugated
foreign peoples and, stimulated by the conditions of life which their
new country offered them (fertility, the nature of the climate, etc.),
and profiting also by the abundance of manual labour furnished them by
the inferior race, they developed intellectual and organizing faculties
which had hitherto been dormant in these conquering tribes. Within the
course of a few thousand years, or even centuries, they gave life to
cultures whose primitive traits completely corresponded to the character
of the founders, though modified by adaptation to the peculiarities of
the soil and the characteristics of the subjugated people. But finally
the conquering race offended against the principles which they first had
observed, namely, the maintenance of their racial stock unmixed, and
they began to intermingle with the subjugated people. Thus they put an
end to their own separate existence; for the original sin committed in
Paradise has always been followed by the expulsion of the guilty
parties.
After a thousand years or more the last visible traces of those former
masters may then be found in a lighter tint of the skin which the Aryan
blood had bequeathed to the subjugated race, and in a fossilized culture
of which those Aryans had been the original creators. For just as the
blood. of the conqueror, who was a conqueror not only in body but also
in spirit, got submerged in the blood of the subject race, so the
substance disappeared out of which the torch of human culture and
progress was kindled. In so far as the blood of the former ruling race
has left a light nuance of colour in the blood of its descendants, as a
token and a memory, the night of cultural life is rendered less dim and
dark by a mild light radiated from the products of those who were the
bearers of the original fire. Their radiance shines across the barbarism
to which the subjected race has reverted and might often lead the
superficial observer to believe that he sees before him an image of the
present race when he is really looking into a mirror wherein only the
past is reflected.
It may happen that in the course of its history such a people will come
into contact a second time, and even oftener, with the original founders
of their culture and may not even remember that distant association.
Instinctively the remnants of blood left from that old ruling race will
be drawn towards this new phenomenon and what had formerly been possible
only under compulsion can now be successfully achieved in a voluntary
way. A new cultural wave flows in and lasts until the blood of its
standard-bearers becomes once again adulterated by intermixture with the
originally conquered race.
It will be the task of those who set themselves to the study of a
universal history of civilization to investigate history from this point
of view instead of allowing themselves to be smothered under the mass of
external data, as is only too often the case with our present historical
science.
This short sketch of the changes that take place among those races that
are only the depositories of a culture also furnishes a picture of the
development and the activity and the disappearance of those who are the
true founders of culture on this earth, namely the Aryans themselves.
Just as in our daily life the so-called man of genius needs a particular
occasion, and sometimes indeed a special stimulus, to bring his genius
to light, so too in the life of the peoples the race that has genius in
it needs the occasion and stimulus to bring that genius to expression.
In the monotony and routine of everyday life even persons of
significance seem just like the others and do not rise beyond the
average level of their fellow-men. But as soon as such men find
themselves in a special situation which disconcerts and unbalances the
others, the humble person of apparently common qualities reveals traits
of genius, often to the amazement of those who have hitherto known him
in the small things of everyday life. That is the reason why a prophet
only seldom counts for something in his own country. War offers an
excellent occasion for observing this phenomenon. In times of distress,
when the others despair, apparently harmless boys suddenly spring up and
become heroes, full of determination, undaunted in the presence of Death
and manifesting wonderful powers of calm reflection under such
circumstances. If such an hour of trial did not come nobody would have
thought that the soul of a hero lurked in the body of that beardless
youth. A special impulse is almost always necessary to bring a man of
genius into the foreground. The sledge-hammer of Fate which strikes down
the one so easily suddenly finds the counter-impact of steel when it
strikes at the other. And, after the common shell of everyday life is
broken, the core that lay hidden in it is displayed to the eyes of an
astonished world. This surrounding world then grows obstinate and will
not believe that what had seemed so like itself is really of that
different quality so suddenly displayed. This is a process which is
repeated probably every time a man of outstanding significance appears.
Though an inventor, for example, does not establish his fame until the
very day that he carries through his invention, it would be a mistake to
believe that the creative genius did not become alive in him until that
moment. From the very hour of his birth the spark of genius is living
within the man who has been endowed with the real creative faculty. True
genius is an innate quality. It can never be the result of education or
training.
As I have stated already, this holds good not merely of the individual
but also of the race. Those peoples who manifest creative abilities in
certain periods of their history have always been fundamentally
creative. It belongs to their very nature, even though this fact may
escape the eyes of the superficial observer. Here also recognition from
outside is only the consequence of practical achievement. Since the rest
of the world is incapable of recognizing genius as such, it can only see
the visible manifestations of genius in the form of inventions,
discoveries, buildings, painting, etc.; but even here a long time passes
before recognition is given. Just as the individual person who has been
endowed with the gift of genius, or at least talent of a very high
order, cannot bring that endowment to realization until he comes under
the urge of special circumstances, so in the life of the nations the
creative capacities and powers frequently have to wait until certain
conditions stimulate them to action.
The most obvious example of this truth is furnished by that race which
has been, and still is, the standard-bearer of human progress: I mean
the Aryan race. As soon as Fate brings them face to face with special
circumstances their powers begin to develop progressively and to be
manifested in tangible form. The characteristic cultures which they
create under such circumstances are almost always conditioned by the
soil, the climate and the people they subjugate. The last factor--that
of the character of the people--is the most decisive one. The more
primitive the technical conditions under which the civilizing activity
takes place, the more necessary is the existence of manual labour which
can be organized and employed so as to take the place of mechanical
power. Had it not been possible for them to employ members of the
inferior race which they conquered, the Aryans would never have been in
a position to take the first steps on the road which led them to a later
type of culture; just as, without the help of certain suitable animals
which they were able to tame, they would never have come to the
invention of mechanical power which has subsequently enabled them to do
without these beasts. The phrase, 'The Moor has accomplished his
function, so let him now depart', has, unfortunately, a profound
application. For thousands of years the horse has been the faithful
servant of man and has helped him to lay the foundations of human
progress, but now motor power has dispensed with the use of the horse.
In a few years to come the use of the horse will cease entirely; and yet
without its collaboration man could scarcely have come to the stage of
development which he has now created.
For the establishment of superior types of civilization the members of
inferior races formed one of the most essential pre-requisites. They
alone could supply the lack of mechanical means without which no
progress is possible. It is certain that the first stages of human
civilization were not based so much on the use of tame animals as on the
employment of human beings who were members of an inferior race.
Only after subjugated races were employed as slaves was a similar fate
allotted to animals, and not vice versa, as some people would have us
believe. At first it was the conquered enemy who had to draw the plough
and only afterwards did the ox and horse take his place. Nobody else but
puling pacifists can consider this fact as a sign of human degradation.
Such people fail to recognize that this evolution had to take place in
order that man might reach that degree of civilization which these
apostles now exploit in an attempt to make the world pay attention to
their rigmarole.
The progress of mankind may be compared to the process of ascending an
infinite ladder. One does not reach the higher level without first
having climbed the lower rungs. The Aryan therefore had to take that
road which his sense of reality pointed out to him and not that which
the modern pacifist dreams of. The path of reality is, however,
difficult and hard to tread; yet it is the only one which finally leads
to the goal where the others envisage mankind in their dreams. But the
real truth is that those dreamers help only to lead man away from his
goal rather than towards it.
It was not by mere chance that the first forms of civilization arose
there where the Aryan came into contact with inferior races, subjugated
them and forced them to obey his command. The members of the inferior
race became the first mechanical tools in the service of a growing
civilization.
Thereby the way was clearly indicated which the Aryan had to follow. As
a conqueror, he subjugated inferior races and turned their physical
powers into organized channels under his own leadership, forcing them to
follow his will and purpose. By imposing on them a useful, though hard,
manner of employing their powers he not only spared the lives of those
whom he had conquered but probably made their lives easier than these
had been in the former state of so-called 'freedom'. While he ruthlessly
maintained his position as their master, he not only remained master but
he also maintained and advanced civilization. For this depended
exclusively on his inborn abilities and, therefore, on the preservation
of the Aryan race as such. As soon, however, as his subject began to
rise and approach the level of their conqueror, a phase of which
ascension was probably the use of his language, the barriers that had
distinguished master from servant broke down. The Aryan neglected to
maintain his own racial stock unmixed and therewith lost the right to
live in the paradise which he himself had created. He became submerged
in the racial mixture and gradually lost his cultural creativeness,
until he finally grew, not only mentally but also physically, more like
the aborigines whom he had subjected rather than his own ancestors. For
some time he could continue to live on the capital of that culture which
still remained; but a condition of fossilization soon set in and he sank
into oblivion.
That is how cultures and empires decline and yield their places to new
formations.
The adulteration of the blood and racial deterioration conditioned
thereby are the only causes that account for the decline of ancient
civilizations; for it is never by war that nations are ruined, but by
the loss of their powers of resistance, which are exclusively a
characteristic of pure racial blood. In this world everything that is
not of sound racial stock is like chaff. Every historical event in the
world is nothing more nor less than a manifestation of the instinct of
racial self-preservation, whether for weal or woe.
The question as to the ground reasons for the predominant importance of
Aryanism can be answered by pointing out that it is not so much that the
Aryans are endowed with a stronger instinct for self-preservation, but
rather that this manifests itself in a way which is peculiar to
themselves. Considered from the subjective standpoint, the will-to-live
is of course equally strong all round and only the forms in which it is
expressed are different. Among the most primitive organisms the instinct
for self-preservation does not extend beyond the care of the individual
ego. Egotism, as we call this passion, is so predominant that it
includes even the time element; which means that the present moment is
deemed the most important and that nothing is left to the future. The
animal lives only for itself, searching for food only when it feels
hunger and fighting only for the preservation of its own life. As long
as the instinct for self-preservation manifests itself exclusively in
such a way, there is no basis for the establishment of a community; not
even the most primitive form of all, that is to say the family. The
society formed by the male with the female, where it goes beyond the
mere conditions of mating, calls for the extension of the instinct of
self-preservation, since the readiness to fight for one's own ego has to
be extended also to the mate. The male sometimes provides food for the
female, but in most cases both parents provide food for the offspring.
Almost always they are ready to protect and defend each other; so that
here we find the first, though infinitely simple, manifestation of the
spirit of sacrifice. As soon as this spirit extends beyond the narrow
limits of the family, we have the conditions under which larger
associations and finally even States can be formed.
The lowest species of human beings give evidence of this quality only to
a very small degree, so that often they do not go beyond the formation
of the family society. With an increasing readiness to place their
immediate personal interests in the background, the capacity for
organizing more extensive communities develops.
The readiness to sacrifice one's personal work and, if necessary, even
one's life for others shows its most highly developed form in the Aryan
race. The greatness of the Aryan is not based on his intellectual
powers, but rather on his willingness to devote all his faculties to the
service of the community. Here the instinct for self-preservation has
reached its noblest form; for the Aryan willingly subordinates his own
ego to the common weal and when necessity calls he will even sacrifice
his own life for the community.
The constructive powers of the Aryan and that peculiar ability he has
for the building up of a culture are not grounded in his intellectual
gifts alone. If that were so they might only be destructive and could
never have the ability to organize; for the latter essentially depends
on the readiness of the individual to renounce his own personal opinions
and interests and to lay both at the service of the human group. By
serving the common weal he receives his reward in return. For example,
he does not work directly for himself but makes his productive work a
part of the activity of the group to which he belongs, not only for his
own benefit but for the general. The spirit underlying this attitude is
expressed by the word: WORK, which to him does not at all signify a
means of earning one's daily livelihood but rather a productive activity
which cannot clash with the interests of the community. Whenever human
activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for
self-preservation it is called theft or usury, robbery or burglary, etc.
This mental attitude, which forces self-interest to recede into the
background in favour of the common weal, is the first prerequisite for
any kind of really human civilization. It is out of this spirit alone
that great human achievements have sprung for which the original doers
have scarcely ever received any recompense but which turns out to be the
source of abundant benefit for their descendants. It is this spirit
alone which can explain why it so often happens that people can endure a
harsh but honest existence which offers them no returns for their toil
except a poor and modest livelihood. But such a livelihood helps to
consolidate the foundations on which the community exists. Every worker
and every peasant, every inventor, state official, etc., who works
without ever achieving fortune or prosperity for himself, is a
representative of this sublime idea, even though he may never become
conscious of the profound meaning of his own activity.
Everything that may be said of that kind of work which is the
fundamental condition of providing food and the basic means of human
progress is true even in a higher sense of work that is done for the
protection of man and his civilization. The renunciation of one's own
life for the sake of the community is the crowning significance of the
idea of all sacrifice. In this way only is it possible to protect what
has been built up by man and to assure that this will not be destroyed
by the hand of man or of nature.
In the German language we have a word which admirably expresses this
underlying spirit of all work: It is Pflichterfüllung, which means the
service of the common weal before the consideration of one's own
interests. The fundamental spirit out of which this kind of activity
springs is the contradistinction of 'Egotism' and we call it 'Idealism'.
By this we mean to signify the willingness of the individual to make
sacrifices for the community and his fellow-men.
It is of the utmost importance to insist again and again that idealism
is not merely a superfluous manifestation of sentiment but rather
something which has been, is and always will be, a necessary
precondition of human civilization; it is even out of this that the very
idea of the word 'Human' arises. To this kind of mentality the Aryan
owes his position in the world. And the world is indebted to the Aryan
mind for having developed the concept of 'mankind'; for it is out of
this spirit alone that the creative force has come which in a unique way
combined robust muscular power with a first-class intellect and thus
created the monuments of human civilization.
Were it not for idealism all the faculties of the intellect, even the
most brilliant, would be nothing but intellect itself, a mere external
phenomenon without inner value and never a creative force.
Since true idealism, however, is essentially the subordination of the
interests and life of the individual to the interests and life of the
community, and since the community on its part represents the
pre-requisite condition of every form of organization, this idealism
accords in its innermost essence with the final purpose of Nature. This
feeling alone makes men voluntarily acknowledge that strength and power
are entitled to take the lead and thus makes them a constituent particle
in that order out of which the whole universe is shaped and formed.
Without being conscious of it, the purest idealism is always associated
with the most profound knowledge. How true this is and how little
genuine idealism has to do with fantastic self-dramatization will become
clear the moment we ask an unspoilt child, a healthy boy for example, to
give his opinion. The very same boy who listens to the rantings of an
'idealistic' pacifist without understanding them, and even rejects them,
would readily sacrifice his young life for the ideal of his people.
Unconsciously his instinct will submit to the knowledge that the
preservation of the species, even at the cost of the individual life, is
a primal necessity and he will protest against the fantasies of pacifist
ranters, who in reality are nothing better than cowardly egoists, even
though camouflaged, who contradict the laws of human development. For it
is a necessity of human evolution that the individual should be imbued
with the spirit of sacrifice in favour of the common weal, and that he
should not be influenced by the morbid notions of those knaves who
pretend to know better than Nature and who have the impudencc to
criticize her decrees.
It is just at those junctures when the idealistic attitude threatens to
disappear that we notice a weakening of this force which is a necessary
constituent in the founding and maintenance of the community and is
thereby a necessary condition of civilization. As soon as the spirit of
egotism begins to prevail among a people then the bonds of the social
order break and man, by seeking his own personal happiness, veritably
tumbles out of heaven and falls into hell.
Posterity will not remember those who pursued only their own individual
interests, but it will praise those heroes who renounced their own
happiness.
The Jew offers the most striking contrast to the Aryan. There is
probably no other people in the world who have so developed the instinct
of self-preservation as the so-called 'chosen' people. The best proof of
this statement is found in the simple fact that this race still exists.
Where can another people be found that in the course of the last two
thousand years has undergone so few changes in mental outlook and
character as the Jewish people? And yet what other people has taken such
a constant part in the great revolutions? But even after having passed
through the most gigantic catastrophes that have overwhelmed mankind,
the Jews remain the same as ever. What an infinitely tenacious
will-to-live, to preserve one's kind, is demonstrated by that fact!
The intellectual faculties of the Jew have been trained through
thousands of years. To-day the Jew is looked upon as specially
'cunning'; and in a certain sense he has been so throughout the ages.
His intellectual powers, however, are not the result of an inner
evolution but rather have been shaped by the object-lessons which the
Jew has received from others. The human spirit cannot climb upwards
without taking successive steps. For every step upwards it needs the
foundation of what has been constructed before--the past--which in, the
comprehensive sense here employed, can have been laid only in a general
civilization. All thinking originates only to a very small degree in
personal experience. The largest part is based on the accumulated
experiences of the past. The general level of civilization provides the
individual, who in most cases is not consciously aware of the fact, with
such an abundance of preliminary knowledge that with this equipment he
can more easily take further steps on the road of progress. The boy of
to-day, for example, grows up among such an overwhelming mass of
technical achievement which has accumulated during the last century that
he takes as granted many things which a hundred years ago were still
mysteries even to the greatest minds of those times. Yet these things
that are not so much a matter of course are of enormous importance to
those who would understand the progress we have made in these matters
and would carry on that progress a step farther. If a man of genius
belonging to the 'twenties of the last century were to arise from his
grave to-day he would find it more difficult to understand our present
age than the contemporary boy of fifteen years of age who may even have
only an average intelligence. The man of genius, thus come back from the
past, would need to provide himself with an extraordinary amount of
preliminary information which our contemporary youth receive
automatically, so to speak, during the time they are growing up among
the products of our modern civilization.
Since the Jew--for reasons that I shall deal with immediately--never had
a civilization of his own, he has always been furnished by others with a
basis for his: intellectual work. His intellect has always developed by
the use of those cultural achievements which he has found ready-to-hand
around him.
The process has never been the reverse.
For, though among the Jews the instinct of self-preservation has not
been weaker but has been much stronger than among other peoples, and
though the impression may easily be created that the intellectual powers
of the Jew are at least equal to those of other races, the Jews
completely lack the most essential pre-requisite of a cultural people,
namely the idealistic spirit. With the Jewish people the readiness for
sacrifice does not extend beyond the simple instinct of individual
preservation. In their case the feeling of racial solidarity which they
apparently manifest is nothing but a very primitive gregarious instinct,
similar to that which may be found among other organisms in this world.
It is a remarkable fact that this herd instinct brings individuals
together for mutual protection only as long as there is a common danger
which makes mutual assistance expedient or inevitable. The same pack of
wolves which a moment ago joined together in a common attack on their
victim will dissolve into individual wolves as soon as their hunger has
been satisfied. This is also sure of horses, which unite to defend
themselves against any aggressor but separate the moment the danger is
over.
It is much the same with the Jew. His spirit of sacrifice is only
apparent. It manifests itself only so long as the existence of the
individual makes this a matter of absolute necessity. But as soon as the
common foe is conquered and the danger which threatened the individual
Jews is overcome and the prey secured, then the apparent harmony
disappears and the original conditions set in again. Jews act in concord
only when a common danger threatens them or a common prey attracts them.
Where these two motives no longer exist then the most brutal egotism
appears and these people who before had lived together in unity will
turn into a swarm of rats that bitterly fight against each other.
If the Jews were the only people in the world they would be wallowing in
filth and mire and would exploit one another and try to exterminate one
another in a bitter struggle, except in so far as their utter lack of
the ideal of sacrifice, which shows itself in their cowardly spirit,
would prevent this struggle from developing.
Therefore it would be a complete mistake to interpret the mutual help
which the Jews render one another when they have to fight--or, to put it
more accurately, to exploit--their fellow being, as the expression of a
certain idealistic spirit of sacrifice.
Here again the Jew merely follows the call of his individual egotism.
That is why the Jewish State, which ought to be a vital organization to
serve the purpose of preserving or increasing the race, has absolutely
no territorial boundaries. For the territorial delimitation of a State
always demands a certain idealism of spirit on the part of the race
which forms that State and especially a proper acceptance of the idea of
work. A State which is territorially delimited cannot be established or
maintained unless the general attitude towards work be a positive one.
If this attitude be lacking, then the necessary basis of a civilization
is also lacking.
That is why the Jewish people, despite the intellectual powers with
which they are apparently endowed, have not a culture--certainly not a
culture of their own. The culture which the Jew enjoys to-day is the
product of the work of others and this product is debased in the hands
of the Jew.
In order to form a correct judgment of the place which the Jew holds in
relation to the whole problem of human civilization, we must bear in
mind the essential fact that there never has been any Jewish art and
consequently that nothing of this kind exists to-day. We must realize
that especially in those two royal domains of art, namely architecture
and music, the Jew has done no original creative work. When the Jew
comes to producing something in the field of art he merely bowdler-izes
something already in existence or simply steals the intellectual word,
of others. The Jew essentially lacks those qualities which are
characteristic of those creative races that are the founders of
civilization.
To what extent the Jew appropriates the civilization built up by
others--or rather corrupts it, to speak more accurately--is indicated by
the fact that he cultivates chiefly the art which calls for the smallest
amount of original invention, namely the dramatic art. And even here he
is nothing better than a kind of juggler or, perhaps more correctly
speaking, a kind of monkey imitator; for in this domain also he lacks
the creative elan which is necessary for the production of all really
great work. Even here, therefore, he is not a creative genius but rather
a superficial imitator who, in spite of all his retouching and tricks,
cannot disguise the fact that there is no inner vitality in the shape he
gives his products. At this juncture the Jewish Press comes in and
renders friendly assistance by shouting hosannas over the head of even
the most ordinary bungler of a Jew, until the rest of the world is
stampeded into thinking that the object of so much praise must really be
an artist, whereas in reality he may be nothing more than a low-class
mimic.
No; the Jews have not the creative abilities which are necessary to the
founding of a civilization; for in them there is not, and never has
been, that spirit of idealism which is an absolutely necessary element
in the higher development of mankind. Therefore the Jewish intellect
will never be constructive but always destructive. At best it may serve
as a stimulus in rare cases but only within the meaning of the poet's
lines: 'THE POWER WHICH ALWAYS WILLS THE BAD, AND ALWAYS WORKS THE GOOD'
(KRAFT, DIE STETS DAS BÖSE WILL UND STETS DAS GUTE SCHAFFT). (Note 15) It
is not through his help but in spite of his help that mankind makes any
progress.
[Note 15. When Mephistopheles first appears to Faust, in the latter's
study, Faust inquires: "What is thy name?" To which Mephistopheles
replies: "A part ofthe Power which always wills the Bad and always works
the Good." And when Faust asks him what is meant by this riddle and why he
should call himself'a part,' the gist of Mephistopheles' reply is that he
is the Spirit of Negation and exists through opposition to the positive
Truth and Order and Beauty which proceed from the never-ending creative
energy of the Deity. In the Prologue to Faust the Lord declares that
man's active nature would grow sluggishin working the good and that
therefore he has to be aroused by the Spirit of Opposition. This Spirit
wills the Bad, but of itself it can do nothing positive, and by its
opposition always works the opposite of what it wills.]
Since the Jew has never had a State which was based on territorial
delimitations, and therefore never a civilization of his own, the idea
arose that here we were dealing with a people who had to be considered
as Nomads. That is a great and mischievous mistake. The true nomad does
actually possess a definite delimited territory where he lives. It is
merely that he does not cultivate it, as the settled farmer does, but
that he lives on the products of his herds, with which he wanders over
his domain. The natural reason for this mode of existence is to be found
in the fact that the soil is not fertile and that it does not give the
steady produce which makes a fixed abode possible. Outside of this
natural cause, however, there is a more profound cause: namely, that no
mechanical civilization is at hand to make up for the natural poverty of
the region in question. There are territories where the Aryan can
establish fixed settlements by means of the technical skill which he has
developed in the course of more than a thousand years, even though these
territories would otherwise have to be abandoned, unless the Aryan were
willing to wander about them in nomadic fashion; but his technical
tradition and his age-long experience of the use of technical means
would probably make the nomadic life unbearable for him. We ought to
remember that during the first period of American colonization numerous
Aryans earned their daily livelihood as trappers and hunters, etc.,
frequently wandering about in large groups with their women and
children, their mode of existence very much resembling that of ordinary
nomads. The moment, however, that they grew more numerous and were able
to accumulate larger resources, they cleared the land and drove out the
aborigines, at the same time establishing settlements which rapidly
increased all over the country.
The Aryan himself was probably at first a nomad and became a settler in
the course of ages. But yet he was never of the Jewish kind. The Jew is
not a nomad; for the nomad has already a definite attitude towards the
concept of 'work', and this attitude served as the basis of a later
cultural development, when the necessary intellectual conditions were at
hand. There is a certain amount of idealism in the general attitude of
the nomad, even though it be rather primitive. His whole character may,
therefore, be foreign to Aryan feeling but it will never be repulsive.
But not even the slightest trace of idealism exists in the Jewish
character. The Jew has never been a nomad, but always a parasite,
battening on the substance of others. If he occasionally abandoned
regions where he had hitherto lived he did not do it voluntarily. He did
it because from time to time he was driven out by people who were tired
of having their hospitality abused by such guests. Jewish self-expansion
is a parasitic phenomenon--since the Jew is always looking for new
pastures for his race.
But this has nothing to do with nomadic life as such; because the Jew
does not ever think of leaving a territory which he has once occupied.
He sticks where he is with such tenacity that he can hardly be driven
out even by superior physical force. He expands into new territories
only when certain conditions for his existence are provided therein; but
even then--unlike the nomad--he will not change his former abode. He is
and remains a parasite, a sponger who, like a pernicious bacillus,
spreads over wider and wider areas according as some favourable area
attracts him. The effect produced by his presence is also like that of
the vampire; for wherever he establishes himself the people who grant
him hospitality are bound to be bled to death sooner or later. Thus the
Jew has at all times lived in States that have belonged to other races
and within the organization of those States he had formed a State of his
own, which is, however, hidden behind the mask of a 'religious
community', as long as external circumstances do not make it advisable
for this community to declare its true nature. As soon as the Jew feels
himself sufficiently established in his position to be able to hold it
without a disguise, he lifts the mask and suddenly appears in the
character which so many did not formerly believe or wish to see: namely
that of the Jew.
The life which the Jew lives as a parasite thriving on the substance of
other nations and States has resulted in developing that specific
character which Schopenhauer once described when he spoke of the Jew as
'The Great Master of Lies'. The kind of existence which he leads forces
the Jew to the systematic use of falsehood, just as naturally as the
inhabitants of northern climates are forced to wear warm clothes.
He can live among other nations and States only as long as he succeeds
in persuading them that the Jews are not a distinct people but the
representatives of a religious faith who thus constitute a 'religious
community', though this be of a peculiar character.
As a matter of fact, however, this is the first of his great falsehoods.
He is obliged to conceal his own particular character and mode of life
that he may be allowed to continue his existence as a parasite among the
nations. The greater the intelligence of the individual Jew, the better
will he succeed in deceiving others. His success in this line may even
go so far that the people who grant him hospitality may be led to
believe that the Jew among them is a genuine Frenchman, for instance, or
Englishman or German or Italian, who just happens to belong to a
religious denomination which is different from that prevailing in these
countries. Especially in circles concerned with the executive
administration of the State, where the officials generally have only a
minimum of historical sense, the Jew is able to impose his infamous
deception with comparative ease. In these circles independent thinking
is considered a sin against the sacred rules according to which official
promotion takes place. It is therefore not surprising that even to-day
in the Bavarian government offices, for example, there is not the
slightest suspicion that the Jews form a distinct nation themselves and
are not merely the adherents of a 'Confession', though one glance at the
Press which belongs to the Jews ought to furnish sufficient evidence to
the contrary even for those who possess only the smallest degree of
intelligence. The JEWISH ECHO, however, is not an official gazette and
therefore not authoritative in the eyes of those government potentates.
Jewry has always been a nation of a definite racial character and never
differentiated merely by the fact of belonging to a certain religion. At
a very early date, urged on by the desire to make their way in the
world, the Jews began to cast about for a means whereby they might
distract such attention as might prove inconvenient for them. What could
be more effective and at the same time more above suspicion than to
borrow and utilize the idea of the religious community? Here also
everything is copied, or rather stolen; for the Jew could not possess
any religious institution which had developed out of his own
consciousness, seeing that he lacks every kind of idealism; which means
that belief in a life beyond this terrestrial existence is foreign to
him. In the Aryan mind no religion can ever be imagined unless it
embodies the conviction that life in some form or other will continue
after death. As a matter of fact, the Talmud is not a book that lays
down principles according to which the individual should prepare for the
life to come. It only furnishes rules for a practical and convenient
life in this world.
The religious teaching of the Jews is principally a collection of
instructions for maintaining the Jewish blood pure and for regulating
intercourse between Jews and the rest of the world: that is to say,
their relation with non-Jews. But the Jewish religious teaching is not
concerned with moral problems. It is rather concerned with economic
problems, and very petty ones at that. In regard to the moral value of
the religious teaching of the Jews there exist and always have existed
quite exhaustive studies (not from the Jewish side; for whatever the
Jews have written on this question has naturally always been of a
tendentious character) which show up the kind of religion that the Jews
have in a light that makes it look very uncanny to the Aryan mind. The
Jew himself is the best example of the kind of product which this
religious training evolves. His life is of this world only and his
mentality is as foreign to the true spirit of Christianity as his
character was foreign to the great Founder of this new creed two
thousand years ago. And the Founder of Christianity made no secret
indeed of His estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it
necessary He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of
God; because then, as always, they used religion as a means of advancing
their commercial interests. But at that time Christ was nailed to the
Cross for his attitude towards the Jews; whereas our modern Christians
enter into party politics and when elections are being held they debase
themselves to beg for Jewish votes. They even enter into political
intrigues with the atheistic Jewish parties against the interests of
their own Christian nation.
On this first and fundamental lie, the purpose of which is to make
people believe that Jewry is not a nation but a religion, other lies are
subsequently based. One of those further lies, for example, is in
connection with the language spoken by the Jew. For him language is not
an instrument for the expression of his inner thoughts but rather a
means of cloaking them. When talking French his thoughts are Jewish and
when writing German rhymes he only gives expression to the character of
his own race.
As long as the Jew has not succeeded in mastering other peoples he is
forced to speak their language whether he likes it or not. But the
moment that the world would become the slave of the Jew it would have to
learn some other language (Esperanto, for example) so that by this means
the Jew could dominate all the more easily.
How much the whole existence of this people is based on a permanent
falsehood is proved in a unique way by 'The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion', which are so violently repudiated by the Jews. With groans and
moans, the FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG repeats again and again that these are
forgeries. This alone is evidence in favour of their authenticity. What
many Jews unconsciously wish to do is here clearly set forth. It is not
necessary to ask out of what Jewish brain these revelations sprang; but
what is of vital interest is that they disclose, with an almost
terrifying precision, the mentality and methods of action characteristic
of the Jewish people and these writings expound in all their various
directions the final aims towards which the Jews are striving. The study
of real happenings, however, is the best way of judging the authenticity
of those documents. If the historical developments which have taken
place within the last few centuries be studied in the light of this book
we shall understand why the Jewish Press incessantly repudiates and
denounces it. For the Jewish peril will be stamped out the moment the
general public come into possession of that book and understand it.
In order to get to know the Jew properly it is necessary to study the
road which he has been following among the other peoples during the last
few centuries. One example will suffice to give a clear insight here.
Since his career has been the same at all epochs--just as the people at
whose expense he has lived have remained the same--for the purposes of
making the requisite analysis it will be best to mark his progress by
stages. For the sake of simplicity we shall indicate these stages by
letters of the alphabet.
The first Jews came into what was then called Germania during the period
of the Roman invasion; and, as usual, they came as merchants. During the
turmoil caused by the great migrations of the German tribes the Jews
seem to have disappeared. We may therefore consider the period when the
Germans formed the first political communities as the beginning of that
process whereby Central and Northern Europe was again, and this time
permanently, Judaized. A development began which has always been the
same or similar wherever and whenever Jews came into contact with Aryan
peoples.
(a) As soon as the first permanent settlements had been established the
Jew was suddenly 'there'. He arrived as a merchant and in the beginning
did not trouble to disguise his nationality. He still remained openly a
Jew, partly it may be because he knew too little of the language. It may
also be that people of other races refused to mix with him, so that he
could not very well adopt any other appearance than that of a foreign
merchant. Because of his subtlety and cunning and the lack of experience
on the part of the people whose guest he became, it was not to his
disadvantage openly to retain his Jewish character. This may even have
been advantageous to him; for the foreigner was received kindly.
(b) Slowly but steadily he began to take part in the economic life
around him; not as a producer, however, but only as a middleman. His
commercial cunning, acquired through thousands of years of negotiation
as an intermediary, made him superior in this field to the Aryans, who
were still quite ingenuous and indeed clumsy and whose honesty was
unlimited; so that after a short while commerce seemed destined to
become a Jewish monopoly. The Jew began by lending out money at usurious
interest, which is a permanent trade of his. It was he who first
introduced the payment of interest on borrowed money. The danger which
this innovation involved was not at first recognized; indeed the
innovation was welcomed, because it offered momentary advantages.
(c) At this stage the Jew had become firmly settled down; that is to
say, he inhabited special sections of the cities and towns and had his
own quarter in the market-places. Thus he gradually came to form a State
within a State. He came to look upon the commercial domain and all money
transactions as a privilege belonging exclusively to himself and he
exploited it ruthlessly.
(d) At this stage finance and trade had become his complete monopoly.
Finally, his usurious rate of interest aroused opposition and the
increasing impudence which the Jew began to manifest all round stirred
up popular indignation, while his display of wealth gave rise to popular
envy. The cup of his iniquity became full to the brim when he included
landed property among his commercial wares and degraded the soil to the
level of a market commodity. Since he himself never cultivated the soil
but considered it as an object to be exploited, on which the peasant may
still remain but only on condition that he submits to the most heartless
exactions of his new master, public antipathy against the Jew steadily
increased and finally turned into open animosity. His extortionate
tyranny became so unbearable that people rebelled against his control
and used physical violence against him. They began to scrutinize this
foreigner somewhat more closely, and then began to discover the
repulsive traits and characteristics inherent in him, until finally an
abyss opened between the Jews and their hosts, across which abyss there
could be no further contact.
In times of distress a wave of public anger has usually arisen against
the Jew; the masses have taken the law into their own hands; they have
seized Jewish property and ruined the Jew in their urge to protect
themselves against what they consider to be a scourge of God. Having
come to know the Jew intimately through the course of centuries, in
times of distress they looked upon his presence among them as a public
danger comparable only to the plague.
(e) But then the Jew began to reveal his true character. He paid court
to governments, with servile flattery, used his money to ingratiate
himself further and thus regularly secured for himself once again the
privilege of exploiting his victim. Although public wrath flared up
against this eternal profiteer and drove him out, after a few years he
reappeared in those same places and carried on as before. No persecution
could force him to give up his trade of exploiting other people and no
amount of harrying succeeded in driving him out permanently. He always
returned after a short time and it was always the old story with him.
In an effort to save at least the worst from happening, legislation was
passed which debarred the Jew from obtaining possession of the land.
(f) In proportion as the powers of kings and princes increased, the Jew
sidled up to them. He begged for 'charters' and 'privileges' which those
gentlemen, who were generally in financial straits, gladly granted if
they received adequate payment in return. However high the price he has
to pay, the Jew will succeed in getting it back within a few years from
operating the privilege he has acquired, even with interest and compound
interest. He is a real leech who clings to the body of his unfortunate
victims and cannot be removed; so that when the princes found themselves
in need once again they took the blood from his swollen veins with their
own hands.
This game was repeated unendingly. In the case of those who were called
'German Princes', the part they played was quite as contemptible as that
played by the Jew. They were a real scourge for their people. Their
compeers may be found in some of the government ministers of our time.
It was due to the German princes that the German nation could not
succeed in definitely freeing itself from the Jewish peril.
Unfortunately the situation did not change at a later period. The
princes finally received the reward which they had a thousand-fold
deserved for all the crimes committed by them against their own people.
They had allied themselves with Satan and later on they discovered that
they were in Satan's embrace.
(g) By permitting themselves to be entangled in the toils of the Jew,
the princes prepared their own downfall. The position which they held
among their people was slowly but steadily undermined not only by their
continued failure to guard the interests of their subjects but by the
positive exploitation of them. The Jew calculated exactly the time when
the downfall of the princes was approaching and did his best to hasten
it. He intensified their financial difficulties by hindering them in the
exercise of their duty towards their people, by inveigling them through
the most servile flatteries into further personal display, whereby he
made himself more and more indispensable to them. His astuteness, or
rather his utter unscrupulousness, in money affairs enabled him to exact
new income from the princes, to squeeze the money out of them and then
have it spent as quickly as possible. Every Court had its 'Court Jews',
as this plague was called, who tortured the innocent victims until they
were driven to despair; while at the same time this Jew provided the
means which the princes squandered on their own pleasures. It is not to
be wondered at that these ornaments of the human race became the
recipients of official honours and even were admitted into the ranks of
the hereditary nobility, thus contributing not only to expose that
social institution to ridicule but also to contaminate it from the
inside.
Naturally the Jew could now exploit the position to which he had
attained and push himself forward even more rapidly than before. Finally
he became baptized and thus entitled to all the rights and privileges
which belonged to the children of the nation on which he preyed. This
was a high-class stroke of business for him, and he often availed
himself of it, to the great joy of the Church, which was proud of having
gained a new child in the Faith, and also to the joy of Israel, which
was happy at seeing the trick pulled off successfully.
(h) At this stage a transformation began to take place in the world of
Jewry. Up to now they had been Jews--that is to say, they did not
hitherto set any great value on pretending to be something else; and
anyhow the distinctive characteristics which separated them from other
races could not be easily overcome. Even as late as the time of
Frederick the Great nobody looked upon the Jews as other than a
'foreign' people, and Goethe rose up in revolt against the failure
legally to prohibit marriage between Christians and Jews. Goethe was
certainly no reactionary and no time-server. What he said came from the
voice of the blood and the voice of reason. Notwithstanding the
disgraceful happenings taking place in Court circles, the people
recognized instinctively that the Jew was the foreign body in their own
flesh and their attitude towards him was directed by recognition of that
fact.
But a change was now destined to take place. In the course of more than
a thousand years the Jew had learned to master the language of his hosts
so thoroughly that he considered he might now lay stress on his Jewish
character and emphasize the 'Germanism' a bit more. Though it must have
appeared ridiculous and absurd at first sight, he was impudent enough to
call himself a 'Teuton', which in this case meant a German. In that way
began one of the most infamous impositions that can be imagined. The Jew
did not possess the slightest traces of the German character. He had
only acquired the art of twisting the German language to his own uses,
and that in a disgusting way, without having assimilated any other
feature of the German character. Therefore his command of the language
was the sole ground on which he could pretend to be a German. It is not
however by the tie of language, but exclusively by the tie of blood that
the members of a race are bound together. And the Jew himself knows this
better than any other, seeing that he attaches so little importance to
the preservation of his own language while at the same time he strives
his utmost to maintain his blood free from intermixture with that of
other races. A man may acquire and use a new language without much
trouble; but it is only his old ideas that he expresses through the new
language. His inner nature is not modified thereby. The best proof of
this is furnished by the Jew himself. He may speak a thousand tongues
and yet his Jewish nature will remain always one and the same. His
distinguishing characteristics were the same when he spoke the Latin
language at Ostia two thousand years ago as a merchant in grain, as they
are to-day when he tries to sell adulterated flour with the aid of his
German gibberish. He is always the same Jew. That so obvious a fact is
not recognized by the average head-clerk in a German government
department, or by an officer in the police administration, is also a
self-evident and natural fact; since it would be difficult to find
another class of people who are so lacking in instinct and intelligence
as the civil servants employed by our modern German State authorities.
The reason why, at the stage I am dealing with, the Jew so suddenly
decided to transform himself into a German is not difficult to discover.
He felt the power of the princes slowly crumbling and therefore looked
about to find a new social plank on which he might stand. Furthermore,
his financial domination over all the spheres of economic life had
become so powerful that he felt he could no longer sustain that enormous
structure or add to it unless he were admitted to the full enjoyment of
the 'rights of citizenship.' He aimed at both, preservation and
expansion; for the higher he could climb the more alluring became the
prospect of reaching the old goal, which was promised to him in ancient
times, namely world-rulership, and which he now looked forward to with
feverish eyes, as he thought he saw it visibly approaching. Therefore
all his efforts were now directed to becoming a fully-fledged citizen,
endowed with all civil and political rights.
That was the reason for his emancipation from the Ghetto.
(i) And thus the Court Jew slowly developed into the national Jew. But
naturally he still remained associated with persons in higher quarters
and he even attempted to push his way further into the inner circles of
the ruling set. But at the same time some other representatives of his
race were currying favour with the people. If we remember the crimes the
Jew had committed against the masses of the people in the course of so
many centuries, how repeatedly and ruthlessly he exploited them and how
he sucked out even the very marrow of their substance, and when we
further remember how they gradually came to hate him and finally
considered him as a public scourge--then we may well understand how
difficult the Jew must have found this final transformation. Yes,
indeed, it must tax all their powers to be able to present themselves as
'friends of humanity' to the poor victims whom they have skinned raw.
Therefore the Jew began by making public amends for the crimes which he
had committed against the people in the past. He started his
metamorphosis by first appearing as the 'benefactor' of humanity. Since
his new philanthropic policy had a very concrete aim in view, he could
not very well apply to himself the biblical counsel, not to allow the
left hand to know what the right hand is giving. He felt obliged to let
as many people as possible know how deeply the sufferings of the masses
grieved him and to what excesses of personal sacrifice he was ready to
go in order to help them. With this manifestation of innate modesty, so
typical of the Jew, he trumpeted his virtues before the world until
finally the world actually began to believe him. Those who refused to
share this belief were considered to be doing him an injustice. Thus
after a little while he began to twist things around, so as to make it
appear that it was he who had always been wronged, and vice versa. There
were really some particularly foolish people who could not help pitying
this poor unfortunate creature of a Jew.
Attention may be called to the fact that, in spite of his proclaimed
readiness to make personal sacrifices, the Jew never becomes poor
thereby. He has a happy knack of always making both ends meet.
Occasionally his benevolence might be compared to the manure which is
not spread over the field merely for the purpose of getting rid of it,
but rather with a view to future produce. Anyhow, after a comparatively
short period of time, the world was given to know that the Jew had
become a general benefactor and philanthropist. What a transformation!
What is looked upon as more or less natural when done by other people
here became an object of astonishment, and even sometimes of admiration,
because it was considered so unusual in a Jew. That is why he has
received more credit for his acts of benevolence than ordinary mortals.
And something more: The Jew became liberal all of a sudden and began to
talk enthusiastically of how human progress must be encouraged.
Gradually he assumed the air of being the herald of a new age.
Yet at the same time he continued to undermine the ground-work of that
part of the economic system in which the people have the most practical
interest. He bought up stock in the various national undertakings and
thus pushed his influence into the circuit of national production,
making this latter an object of buying and selling on the stock
exchange, or rather what might be called the pawn in a financial game of
chess, and thus ruining the basis on which personal proprietorship alone
is possible. Only with the entrance of the Jew did that feeling of
estrangement, between employers and employees begin which led at a later
date to the political class-struggle.
Finally the Jew gained an increasing influence in all economic
undertakings by means of his predominance in the stock-exchange. If not
the ownership, at least he secured control of the working power of the
nation.
In order to strengthen his political position, he directed his efforts
towards removing the barrier of racial and civic discrimination which
had hitherto hindered his advance at every turn. With characteristic
tenacity he championed the cause of religious tolerance for this
purpose; and in the freemason organization, which had fallen completely
into his hands, he found a magnificent weapon which helped him to
achieve his ends. Government circles, as well as the higher sections of
the political and commercial bourgeoisie, fell a prey to his plans
through his manipulation of the masonic net, though they themselves did
not even suspect what was happening.
Only the people as such, or rather the masses which were just becoming
conscious of their own power and were beginning to use it in the fight
for their rights and liberties, had hitherto escaped the grip of the
Jew. At least his influence had not yet penetrated to the deeper and
wider sections of the people. This was unsatisfactory to him. The most
important phase of his policy was therefore to secure control over the
people. The Jew realized that in his efforts to reach the position of
public despot he would need a 'peace-maker.' And he thought he could
find a peace-maker if he could whip-in sufficient extensive sections of
the bourgeois. But the freemasons failed to catch the
glove-manufacturers and the linen-weavers in the frail meshes of their
net. And so it became necessary to find a grosser and withal a more
effective means. Thus another weapon beside that of freemasonry would
have to be secured. This was the Press. The Jew exercised all his skill
and tenacity in getting hold of it. By means of the Press he began
gradually to control public life in its entirety. He began to drive it
along the road which he had chosen to reach his own ends; for he was now
in a position to create and direct that force which, under the name of
'public opinion' is better known to-day than it was some decades ago.
Simultaneously the Jew gave himself the air of thirsting after
knowledge. He lauded every phase of progress, particularly those phases
which led to the ruin of others; for he judges all progress and
development from the standpoint of the advantages which these bring to
his own people. When it brings him no such advantages he is the deadly
enemy of enlightenment and hates all culture which is real culture as
such. All the knowledge which he acquires in the schools of others is
exploited by him exclusively in the service of his own race.
Even more watchfully than ever before, he now stood guard over his
Jewish nationality. Though bubbling over with 'enlightenment',
'progress', 'liberty', 'humanity', etc., his first care was to preserve
the racial integrity of his own people. He occasionally bestowed one of
his female members on an influential Christian; but the racial stock of
his male descendants was always preserved unmixed fundamentally. He
poisons the blood of others but preserves his own blood unadulterated.
The Jew scarcely ever marries a Christian girl, but the Christian takes
a Jewess to wife. The mongrels that are a result of this latter union
always declare themselves on the Jewish side. Thus a part of the higher
nobility in particular became completely degenerate. The Jew was well
aware of this fact and systematically used this means of disarming the
intellectual leaders of the opposite race. To mask his tactics and fool
his victims, he talks of the equality of all men, no matter what their
race or colour may be. And the simpletons begin to believe him.
Since his whole nature still retains too foreign an odour for the broad
masses of the people to allow themselves to be caught in his snare, he
uses the Press to put before the public a picture of himself which is
entirely untrue to life but well designed to serve his purpose. In the
comic papers special efforts are made to represent the Jews as an
inoffensive little race which, like all others, has its peculiarities.
In spite of their manners, which may seem a bit strange, the comic
papers present the Jews as fundamentally good-hearted and honourable.
Attempts are generally made to make them appear insignificant rather
than dangerous.
During this phase of his progress the chief goal of the Jew was the
victory of democracy, or rather the supreme hegemony of the
parliamentary system, which embodies his concept of democracy. This
institution harmonises best with his purposes; for thus the personal
element is eliminated and in its place we have the dunder-headed
majority, inefficiency and, last but by no means least, knavery.
The final result must necessarily have been the overthrow of the
monarchy, which had to happen sooner or later.
(j) A tremendous economic development transformed the social structure
of the nation. The small artisan class slowly disappeared and the
factory worker, who took its place, had scarcely any chance of
establishing an independent existence of his own but sank more and more
to the level of a proletariat. An essential characteristic of the
factory worker is that he is scarcely ever able to provide for an
independent source of livelihood which will support him in later life.
In the true sense of the word, he is 'disinherited'. His old age is a
misery to him and can hardly be called life at all.
In earlier times a similar situation had been created, which had
imperatively demanded a solution and for which a solution was found.
Side by side with the peasant and the artisan, a new class was gradually
developed, namely that of officials and employees, especially those
employed in the various services of the State. They also were a
'disinherited' class, in the true sense of the word. But the State found
a remedy for this unhealthy situation by taking upon itself the duty of
providing for the State official who could establish nothing that would
be an independent means of livelihood for himself in his old age. Thus
the system of pensions and retiring allowances was introduced. Private
enterprises slowly followed this example in increasing numbers; so that
to-day every permanent non-manual worker receives a pension in his later
years, if the firm which he has served is one that has reached or gone
beyond a certain size. It was only by virtue of the assurance given of
State officials, that they would be cared for in their old age. that
such a high degree of unselfish devotion to duty was developed, which in
pre-war times was one of the distinguising characteristics of German
officials.
Thus a whole class which had no personal property was saved from
destitution by an intelligent system of provision, and found a place in
the social structure of the national community.
The problem is now put before the State and nation, but this time in a
much larger form. When the new industries sprang up and developed,
millions of people left the countryside and the villages to take up
employment in the big factories. The conditions under which this new
class found itself forced to live were worse than miserable. The more or
less mechanical transformation of the methods of work hitherto in vogue
among the artisans and peasants did not fit in well with the habits or
mentality of this new working-class. The way in which the peasants and
artisans had formerly worked had nothing comparable to the intensive
labour of the new factory worker. In the old trades time did not play a
highly important role, but it became an essential element in the new
industrial system. The formal taking over of the old working hours into
the mammoth industrial enterprises had fatal results. The actual amount
of work hitherto accomplished within a certain time was comparatively
small, because the modern methods of intensive production were then
unknown. Therefore, though in the older system a working day of fourteen
or even fifteen hours was not unendurable, now it was beyond the
possibilities of human endurance because in the new system every minute
was utilized to the extreme. This absurd transference of the old working
hours to the new industrial system proved fatal in two directions.
First, it ruined the health of the workers; secondly, it destroyed their
faith in a superior law of justice. Finally, on the one hand a miserable
wage was received and, on the other, the employer held a much more
lucrative position than before. Hence a striking difference between the
ways of life on the one side and on the other.
In the open country there could be no social problem, because the master
and the farm-hand were doing the same kind of work and doing it
together. They ate their food in common, and sometimes even out of the
same dish. But in this sphere also the new system introduced an entirely
different set of conditions between masters and men.
The division created between employer and employees seems not to have
extended to all branches of life. How far this Judaizing process has
been allowed to take effect among our people is illustrated by the fact
that manual labour not only receives practically no recognition but is
even considered degrading. That is not a natural German attitude. It is
due to the introduction of a foreign element into our lives, and that
foreign element is the Jewish spirit, one of the effects of which has
been to transform the high esteem in which our handicrafts once were
held into a definite feeling that all physical labour is something base
and unworthy.
Thus a new social class has grown up which stands in low esteem; and the
day must come when we shall have to face the question of whether the
nation will be able to make this class an integral part of the social
community or whether the difference of status now existing will become a
permanent gulf separating this class from the others.
One thing, however, is certain: This class does not include the worst
elements of the community in its ranks. Rather the contrary is the
truth: it includes the most energetic parts of the nation. The
sophistication which is the result of a so-called civilization has not
yet exercised its disintegrating and degenerating influence on this
class. The broad masses of this new lower class, constituted by the
manual labourers, have not yet fallen a prey to the morbid weakness of
pacifism. These are still robust and, if necessary, they can be brutal.
While our bourgeoisie middle class paid no attention at all to this
momentous problem and indifferently allowed events to take their course,
the Jew seized upon the manifold possibilities which the situation
offered him for the future. While on the one hand he organized
capitalistic methods of exploitation to their ultimate degree of
efficiency, he curried favour with the victims of his policy and his
power and in a short while became the leader of their struggle against
himself. 'Against himself' is here only a figurative way of speaking;
for this 'Great Master of Lies' knows how to appear in the guise of the
innocent and throw the guilt on others. Since he had the impudence to
take a personal lead among the masses, they never for a moment suspected
that they were falling a prey to one of the most infamous deceits ever
practised. And yet that is what it actually was.
The moment this new class had arisen out of the general economic
situation and taken shape as a definite body in the social order, the
Jew saw clearly where he would find the necessary pacemaker for his own
progressive march. At first he had used the bourgeois class as a
battering-ram against the feudal order; and now he used the worker
against the bourgeois world. Just as he succeeded in obtaining civic
rights by intrigues carried on under the protection of the bourgeois
class, he now hoped that by joining in the struggle which the workers
were waging for their own existence he would be able to obtain full
control over them.
When that moment arrives, then the only objective the workers will have
to fight for will be the future of the Jewish people. Without knowing
it, the worker is placing himself at the service of the very power
against which he believes he is fighting. Apparently he is made to fight
against capital and thus he is all the more easily brought to fight for
capitalist interests. Outcries are systematically raised against
international capital but in reality it is against the structure of
national economics that these slogans are directed. The idea is to
demolish this structure and on its ruins triumphantly erect the
structure of the International Stock Exchange.
In this line of action the procedure of the Jew was as follows:
He kowtowed to the worker, hypocritically pretended to feel pity for him
and his lot, and even to be indignant at the misery and poverty which
the worker had to endure. That is the way in which the Jew endeavoured
to gain the confidence of the working class. He showed himself eager to
study their various hardships, whether real or imaginary, and strove to
awaken a yearning on the part of the workers to change the conditions
under which they lived. The Jew artfully enkindled that innate yearning
for social justice which is a typical Aryan characteristic. Once that
yearning became alive it was transformed into hatred against those in
more fortunate circumstances of life. The next stage was to give a
precise philosophical aspect to the struggle for the elimination of
social wrongs. And thus the Marxist doctrine was invented.
By presenting his doctrine as part and parcel of a just revindication of
social rights, the Jew propagated the doctrine all the more effectively.
But at the same time he provoked the opposition of decent people who
refused to admit these demands which, because of the form and
pseudo-philosophical trimmings in which they are presented, seemed
fundamentally unjust and impossible for realization. For, under the
cloak of purely social concepts there are hidden aims which are of a
Satanic character. These aims are even expounded in the open with the
clarity of unlimited impudence. This Marxist doctrine is an individual
mixture of human reason and human absurdity; but the combination is
arranged in such a way that only the absurd part of it could ever be put
into practice, but never the reasonable part of it. By categorically
repudiating the personal worth of the individual and also the nation and
its racial constituent, this doctrine destroys the fundamental basis of
all civilization; for civilization essentially depends on these very
factors. Such is the true essence of the Marxist WELTANSCHAUUNG, so far
as the word WELTANSCHAUUNG can be applied at all to this phantom
arising from a criminal brain. The destruction of the concept of
personality and of race removes the chief obstacle which barred the way
to domination of the social body by its inferior elements, which are the
Jews.
The very absurdity of the economic and political theories of Marxism
gives the doctrine its peculiar significance. Because of its
pseudo-logic, intelligent people refuse to support it, while all those
who are less accustomed to use their intellectual faculties, or who have
only a rudimentary notion of economic principles, join the Marxist cause
with flying banners. The intelligence behind the movement--for even this
movement needs intelligence if it is to subsist--is supplied by the Jews
themselves, naturally of course as a gratuitous service which is at the
same time a sacrifice on their part.
Thus arose a movement which was composed exclusively of manual workers
under the leadership of Jews. To all external appearances, this movement
strives to ameliorate the conditions under which the workers live; but
in reality its aim is to enslave and thereby annihilate the non-Jewish
races.
The propaganda which the freemasons had carried on among the so-called
intelligentsia, whereby their pacifist teaching paralysed the instinct
for national self-preservation, was now extended to the broad masses of
the workers and bourgeoisie by means of the Press, which was almost
everywhere in Jewish hands. To those two instruments of disintegration a
third and still more ruthless one was added, namely, the organization of
brute physical force among the masses. As massed columns of attacks, the
Marxist troops stormed those parts of the social order which had been
left standing after the two former undermining operations had done their
work.
The combined activity of all these forces has been marvellously managed.
And it will not be surprising if it turns out that those institutions
which have always appeared as the organs of the more or less traditional
authority of the State should now fall before the Marxist attack. Among
our higher and highest State officials, with very few exceptions, the
Jew has found the cost complacent backers in his work of destruction. An
attitude of sneaking servility towards 'superiors' and supercilious
arrogance towards 'inferiors' are the characteristics of this class of
people, as well as a grade of stupidity which is really frightening and
at the same time a towering self-conceit, which has been so consistently
developed to make it amusing.
But these qualities are of the greatest utility to the Jew in his
dealings with our authorities. Therefore they are qualities which he
appreciates most in the officials.
If I were to sketch roughly the actual struggle which is now beginning I
should describe it somewhat thus:
Not satisfied with the economic conquest of the world, but also
demanding that it must come under his political control, the Jew
subdivides the organized Marxist power into two parts, which correspond
to the ultimate objectives that are to be fought for in this struggle
which is carried on under the direction of the Jew. To outward
appearance, these seem to be two independent movements, but in reality
they constitute an indivisible unity. The two divisions are: The
political movement and the trades union movement.
The trades union movement has to gather in the recruits. It offers
assistance and protection to the workers in the hard struggle which they
have to wage for the bare means of existence, a struggle which has been
occasioned by the greediness and narrow-mindedness of many of the
industrialists. Unless the workers be ready to surrender all claims to
an existence which the dignity of human nature itself demands, and
unless they are ready to submit their fate to the will of employers who
in many cases have no sense of human responsibilities and are utterly
callous to human wants, then the worker must necessarily take matters
into his own hands, seeing that the organized social community--that is
to say, the State--pays no attention to his needs.
The so-called national-minded bourgeoisie, blinded by its own material
interests, opposes this life-or-death struggle of the workers and places
the most difficult obstacles in their way. Not only does this
bourgeoisie hinder all efforts to enact legislation which would shorten
the inhumanly long hours of work, prohibit child-labour, grant security
and protection to women and improve the hygienic conditions of the
workshops and the dwellings of the working-class, but while the
bourgeoisie hinders all this the shrewd Jew takes the cause of the
oppressed into his own hands. He gradually becomes the leader of the
trades union movements, which is an easy task for him, because he does
not genuinely intend to find remedies for the social wrong: he pursues
only one objective, namely, to gather and consolidate a body of
followers who will act under his commands as an armed weapon in the
economic war for the destruction of national economic independence. For,
while a sound social policy has to move between the two poles of
securing a decent level of public health and welfare on the one hand
and, on the other, that of safeguarding the independence of the economic
life of the nation, the Jew does not take these poles into account at
all. The destruction of both is one of his main objects. He would ruin,
rather than safeguard, the independence of the national economic system.
Therefore, as the leader of the trades union movement, he has no
scruples about putting forward demands which not only go beyond the
declared purpose of the movement but could not be carried into effect
without ruining the national economic structure. On the other hand, he
has no interest in seeing a healthy and sturdy population develop; he
would be more content to see the people degenerate into an unthinking
herd which could be reduced to total subjection. Because these are his
final objectives, he can afford to put forward the most absurd claims.
He knows very well that these claims can never be realized and that
therefore nothing in the actual state of affairs could be altered by
them, but that the most they can do is to arouse the spirit of unrest
among the masses. That is exactly the purpose which he wishes such
propaganda to serve and not a real and honest improvement of the social
conditions.
The Jews will therefore remain the unquestioned leaders of the trades
union movement so long as a campaign is not undertaken, which must be
carried out on gigantic lines, for the enlightenment of the masses; so
that they will be enabled better to understand the causes of their
misery. Or the same end might be achieved if the government authorities
would get rid of the Jew and his work. For as long as the masses remain
so ill-informed as they actually are to-day, and as long as the State
remains as indifferent to their lot as it now is, the masses will follow
whatever leader makes them the most extravagant promises in regard to
economic matters. The Jew is a past master at this art and his
activities are not hampered by moral considerations of any kind.
Naturally it takes him only a short time to defeat all his competitors
in this field and drive them from the scene of action. In accordance
with the general brutality and rapacity of his nature, he turns the
trades union movement into an organization for the exercise of physical
violence. The resistance of those whose common sense has hitherto saved
them from surrendering to the Jewish dictatorship is now broken down by
terrorization. The success of that kind of activity is enormous.
Parallel with this, the political organization advances. It operates
hand-in-hand with the trades union movement, inasmuch as the latter
prepares the masses for the political organization and even forces them
into it. This is also the source that provides the money which the
political organization needs to keep its enormous apparatus in action.
The trades union organization is the organ of control for the political
activity of its members and whips in the masses for all great political
demonstrations. In the end it ceases to struggle for economic interests
but places its chief weapon, the refusal to continue work--which takes
the form of a general strike--at the disposal of the political movement.
By means of a Press whose contents are adapted to the level of the most
ignorant readers, the political and trades union organizations are
provided with an instrument which prepares the lowest stratum of the
nation for a campaign of ruthless destruction. It is not considered part
of the purpose of this Press to inspire its readers with ideals which
might help them to lift their minds above the sordid conditions of their
daily lives; but, on the contrary, it panders to their lowest instincts.
Among the lazy-minded and self-seeking sections of the masses this kind
of speculation turns out lucrative.
It is this Press above all which carries on a fanatical campaign of
calumny, strives to tear down everything that might be considered as a
mainstay of national independence and to sabotage all cultural values as
well as to destroy the autonomy of the national economic system.
It aims its attack especially against all men of character who refuse to
fall into line with the Jewish efforts to obtain control over the State
or who appear dangerous to the Jews merely because of their superior
intelligence. For in order to incur the enmity of the Jew it is not
necessary to show any open hostility towards him. It is quite sufficient
if one be considered capable of opposing the Jew some time in the future
or using his abilities and character to enhance the power and position
of a nation which the Jew finds hostile to himself.
The Jewish instinct, which never fails where these problems have to be
dealt with, readily discerns the true mentality of those whom the Jew
meets in everyday life; and those who are not of a kindred spirit with
him may be sure of being listed among his enemies. Since the Jew is not
the object of aggression but the aggressor himself, he considers as his
enemies not only those who attack him but also those who may be capable
of resisting him. The means which he employs to break people of this
kind, who may show themselves decent and upright, are not the open means
generally used in honourable conflict, but falsehood and calumny.
He will stop at nothing. His utterly low-down conduct is so appalling
that one really cannot be surprised if in the imagination of our people
the Jew is pictured as the incarnation of Satan and the symbol of evil.
The ignorance of the broad masses as regards the inner character of the
Jew, and the lack of instinct and insight that our upper classes
display, are some of the reasons which explain how it is that so many
people fall an easy prey to the systematic campaign of falsehood which
the Jew carries on.
While the upper classes, with their innate cowardliness, turn away from
anyone whom the Jew thus attacks with lies and calumny, the common
people are credulous of everything, whether because of their ignorance
or their simple-mindedness. Government authorities wrap themselves up in
a robe of silence, but more frequently they persecute the victims of
Jewish attacks in order to stop the campaign in the Jewish Press. To the
fatuous mind of the government official such a line of conduct appears
to belong to the policy of upholding the authority of the State and
preserving public order. Gradually the Marxist weapon in the hands of
the Jew becomes a constant bogy to decent people. Sometimes the fear of
it sticks in the brain or weighs upon them as a kind of nightmare.
People begin to quail before this fearful foe and therewith become his
victims.
(k) The Jewish domination in the State seems now so fully assured that
not only can he now afford to call himself a Jew once again, but he even
acknowledges freely and openly what his ideas are on racial and
political questions. A section of the Jews avows itself quite openly as
an alien people, but even here there is another falsehood. When the
Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the new national
consciousness of the Jews will be satisfied by the establishment of a
Jewish State in Palestine, the Jews thereby adopt another means to dupe
the simple-minded Gentile. They have not the slightest intention of
building up a Jewish State in Palestine so as to live in it. What they
really are aiming at is to establish a central organization for their
international swindling and cheating. As a sovereign State, this cannot
be controlled by any of the other States. Therefore it can serve as a
refuge for swindlers who have been found out and at the same time a
high-school for the training of other swindlers.
As a sign of their growing presumption and sense of security, a certain
section of them openly and impudently proclaim their Jewish nationality
while another section hypocritically pretend that they are German,
French or English as the case may be. Their blatant behaviour in their
relations with other people shows how clearly they envisage their day of
triumph in the near future.
The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically
glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce,
adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own
people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial
foundations of a subjugated people. In his systematic efforts to ruin
girls and women he strives to break down the last barriers of
discrimination between him and other peoples. The Jews were responsible
for bringing negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of
bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its
cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long
as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of
their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world
can the Jew become master of any people except a bastardized people.
That is why the Jew systematically endeavours to lower the racial
quality of a people by permanently adulterating the blood of the
individuals who make up that people.
In the field of politics he now begins to replace the idea of democracy
by introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the masses
organized under the Marxist banners he has found a weapon which makes it
possible for him to discard democracy, so as to subjugate and rule in a
dictatorial fashion by the aid of brute force. He is systematically
working in two ways to bring about this revolution. These ways are the
economic and the political respectively.
Aided by international influences, he forms a ring of enemies around
those nations which have proved themselves too sturdy for him in
withstanding attacks from within. He would like to force them into war
and then, if it should be necessary to his plans, he will unfurl the
banners of revolt even while the troops are actually fighting at the
front.
Economically he brings about the destruction of the State by a
systematic method of sabotaging social enterprises until these become so
costly that they are taken out of the hands of the State and then
submitted to the control of Jewish finance. Politically he works to
withdraw from the State its means of susbsistence, inasmuch as he
undermines the foundations of national resistance and defence, destroys
the confidence which the people have in their Government, reviles the
past and its history and drags everything national down into the gutter.
Culturally his activity consists in bowdlerizing art, literature and the
theatre, holding the expressions of national sentiment up to scorn,
overturning all concepts of the sublime and beautiful, the worthy and
the good, finally dragging the people to the level of his own low
mentality.
Of religion he makes a mockery. Morality and decency are described as
antiquated prejudices and thus a systematic attack is made to undermine
those last foundations on which the national being must rest if the
nation is to struggle for its existence in this world.
(l) Now begins the great and final revolution. As soon as the Jew is in
possession of political power he drops the last few veils which have
hitherto helped to conceal his features. Out of the democratic Jew, the
Jew of the People, arises the 'Jew of the Blood', the tyrant of the
peoples. In the course of a few years he endeavours to exterminate all
those who represent the national intelligence. And by thus depriving the
peoples of their natural intellectual leaders he fits them for their
fate as slaves under a lasting despotism.
Russia furnishes the most terrible example of such a slavery. In that
country the Jew killed or starved thirty millions of the people, in a
bout of savage fanaticism and partly by the employment of inhuman
torture. And he did this so that a gang of Jewish literati and financial
bandits should dominate over a great people.
But the final consequence is not merely that the people lose all their
freedom under the domination of the Jews, but that in the end these
parasites themselves disappear. The death of the victim is followed
sooner or later by that of the vampire.
If we review all the causes which contributed to bring about the
downfall of the German people we shall find that the most profound and
decisive cause must be attributed to the lack of insight into the racial
problem and especially in the failure to recognize the Jewish danger.
It would have been easy enough to endure the defeats suffered on the
battlefields in August 1918. They were nothing when compared with the
military victories which our nation had achieved. Our downfall was not
the result of those defeats; but we were overthrown by that force which
had prepared those defeats by systematically operating for several
decades to destroy those political instincts and that moral stamina
which alone enable a people to struggle for its existence and therewith
secure the right to exist.
By neglecting the problem of preserving the racial foundations of our
national life, the old Empire abrogated the sole right which entitles a
people to live on this planet. Nations that make mongrels of their
people, or allow their people to be turned into mongrels, sin against
the Will of Eternal Providence. And thus their overthrow at the hands of
a stronger opponent cannot be looked upon as a wrong but, on the
contrary, as a restoration of justice. If a people refuses to guard and
uphold the qualities with which it has been endowed by Nature and which
have their roots in the racial blood, then such a people has no right to
complain over the loss of its earthly existence.
Everything on this earth can be made into something better. Every defeat
may be made the foundation of a future victory. Every lost war may be
the cause of a later resurgence. Every visitation of distress can give a
new impetus to human energy. And out of every oppression those forces
can develop which bring about a new re-birth of the national
soul--provided always that the racial blood is kept pure.
But the loss of racial purity will wreck inner happiness for ever. It
degrades men for all time to come. And the physical and moral
consequences can never be wiped out.
If this unique problem be studied and compared with the other problems
of life we shall easily recognize how small is their importance in
comparison with this. They are all limited to time; but the problem of
the maintenance or loss of the purity of the racial blood will last as
long as man himself lasts.
All the symptoms of decline which manifested themselves already in
pre-war times can be traced back to the racial problem.
Whether one is dealing with questions of general law, or monstrous
excrescences in economic life, of phenomena which point to a cultural
decline or political degeneration, whether it be a question of defects
in the school-system or of the evil influence which the Press exerts
over the adult population--always and everywhere these phenomena are at
bottom caused by a lack of consideration for the interests of the race
to which one's own nation belongs, or by the failure to recognize the
danger that comes from allowing a foreign race to exist within the
national body.
That is why all attempts at reform, all institutions for social relief,
all political striving, all economic progress and all apparent increase
in the general stock of knowledge, were doomed to be unproductive of any
significant results. The nation, as well as the organization which
enables it to exist--namely, the State--were not developing in inner
strength and stability, but, on the contrary, were visibly losing their
vitality. The false brilliance of the Second Empire could not disguise
the inner weakness. And every attempt to invigorate it anew failed
because the main and most important problem was left out of
consideration.
It would be a mistake to think that the followers of the various
political parties which tried to doctor the condition of the German
people, or even all their leaders, were bad in themselves or meant
wrong. Their activity even at best was doomed to fail, merely because of
the fact that they saw nothing but the symptoms of our general malady
and they tried to doctor the symptoms while they overlooked the real
cause of the disease. If one makes a methodical study of the lines along
which the old Empire developed one cannot help seeing, after a careful
political analysis, that a process of inner degeneration had already set
in even at the time when the united Empire was formed and the German
nation began to make rapid external progress. The general situation was
declining, in spite of the apparent political success and in spite of
the increasing economic wealth. At the elections to the Reichstag the
growing number of Marxist votes indicated that the internal breakdown
and the political collapse were then rapidly approaching. All the
victories of the so-called bourgeois parties were fruitless, not only
because they could not prevent the numerical increase in the growing
mass of Marxist votes, even when the bourgeois parties triumphed at the
polls, but mainly because they themselves were already infected with the
germs of decay. Though quite unaware of it, the bourgeois world was
infected from within with the deadly virus of Marxist ideas. The fact
that they sometimes openly resisted was to be explained by the
competitive strife among ambitious political leaders, rather than by
attributing it to any opposition in principle between adversaries who
were determined to fight one another to the bitter end. During all those
years only one protagonist was fighting with steadfast perseverance.
This was the Jew. The Star of David steadily ascended as the will to
national self-preservation declined.
Therefore it was not a solid national phalanx that, of itself and out of
its own feeling of solidarity, rushed to the battlefields in August
1914. But it was rather the manifestation of the last flicker from the
instinct of national self-preservation against the progress of the
paralysis with which the pacifist and Marxist doctrine threatened our
people. Even in those days when the destinies of the nation were in the
balance the internal enemy was not recognized; therefore all efforts to
resist the external enemy were bound to be in vain. Providence did not
grant the reward to the victorious sword, but followed the eternal law
of retributive justice. A profound recognition of all this was the
source of those principles and tendencies which inspire our new
movement. We were convinced that only by recognizing such truths could
we stop the national decline in Germany and lay a granite foundation on
which the State could again be built up, a State which would not be a
piece of mechanism alien to our people, constituted for economic
purposes and interests, but an organism created from the soul of the
people themselves.
A GERMAN STATE IN A GERMAN NATION
CHAPTER XII
THE FIRST STAGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERMAN
NATIONAL SOCIALIST LABOUR PARTY
Here at the close of the volume I shall describe the first stage in the
progress of our movement and shall give a brief account of the problems
we had to deal with during that period. In doing this I have no
intention of expounding the ideals which we have set up as the goal of
our movement; for these ideals are so momentous in their significance
that an exposition of them will need a whole volume. Therefore I shall
devote the second volume of this book to a detailed survey of the
principles which form the programme of our movement and I shall attempt
to draw a picture of what we mean by the word 'State'. When I say 'we'
in this connection I mean to include all those hundreds of thousands who
have fundamentally the same longing, though in the individual cases they
cannot find adequate words to describe the vision that hovers before
their eyes. It is a characteristic feature of all great reforms that in
the beginning there is only one single protagonist to come forward on
behalf of several millions of people. The final goal of a great
reformation has often been the object of profound longing on the parts
of hundreds of thousands for many centuries before, until finally one
among them comes forward as a herald to announce the will of that
multitude and become the standard-bearer of the old yearning, which he
now leads to a realization in a new idea.
The fact that millions of our people yearn at heart for a radical change
in our present conditions is proved by the profound discontent which
exists among them. This feeling is manifested in a thousand ways. Some
express it in a form of discouragement and despair. Others show it in
resentment and anger and indignation. Among some the profound discontent
calls forth an attitude of indifference, while it urges others to
violent manifestations of wrath. Another indication of this feeling may
be seen on the one hand in the attitude of those who abstain from voting
at elections and, on the other, in the large numbers of those who side
with the fanatical extremists of the left wing.
To these latter people our young movement had to appeal first of all. It
was not meant to be an organization for contented and satisfied people,
but was meant to gather in all those who were suffering from profound
anxiety and could find no peace, those who were unhappy and
discontented. It was not meant to float on the surface of the nation but
rather to push its roots deep among the masses.
Looked at from the purely political point of view, the situation in 1918
was as follows: A nation had been torn into two parts. One part, which
was by far the smaller of the two, contained the intellectual classes of
the nation from which all those employed in physical labour were
excluded. On the surface these intellectual classes appeared to be
national-minded, but that word meant nothing else to them except a very
vague and feeble concept of the duty to defend what they called the
interests of the State, which in turn seemed identical with those of the
dynastic regime. This class tried to defend its ideas and reach its aims
by carrying on the fight with the aid of intellectual weapons, which
could be used only here and there and which had only a superficial
effect against the brutal measures employed by the adversaries, in the
face of which the intellectual weapons were of their very nature bound
to fail. With one violent blow the class which had hitherto governed was
now struck down. It trembled with fear and accepted every humiliation
imposed on it by the merciless victor.
Over against this class stood the broad masses of manual labourers who
were organized in movements with a more or less radically Marxist
tendency. These organized masses were firmly determined to break any
kind of intellectual resistance by the use of brute force. They had no
nationalist tendencies whatsoever and deliberately repudiated the idea
of advancing the interests of the nation as such. On the contrary, they
promoted the interests of the foreign oppressor. Numerically this class
embraced the majority of the population and, what is more important,
included all those elements of the nation without whose collaboration a
national resurgence was not only a practical impossibility but was even
inconceivable.
For already in 1918 one thing had to be clearly recognized; namely, that
no resurgence of the German nation could take place until we had first
restored our national strength to face the outside world. For this
purpose arms are not the preliminary necessity, though our bourgeois
'statesmen' always blathered about it being so; what was wanted was
will-power. At one time the German people had more than sufficient
military armament. And yet they were not able to defend their liberty
because they lacked those energies which spring from the instinct of
national self-preservation and the will to hold on to one's own. The
best armament is only dead and worthless material as long as the spirit
is wanting which makes men willing and determined to avail themselves of
such weapons. Germany was rendered defenceless not because she lacked
arms, but because she lacked the will to keep her arms for the
maintenance of her people.
To-day our Left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting
that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily
results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this
is the policy of traitors. To all that kind of talk the answer ought to
be: No, the contrary is the truth. Your action in delivering up the arms
was dictated by your anti-national and criminal policy of abandoning the
interests of the nation. And now you try to make people believe that
your miserable whining is fundamentally due to the fact that you have no
arms. Just like everything else in your conduct, this is a lie and a
falsification of the true reason.
But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It
was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who
came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms. The
conservative politicians have neither right nor reason on their side
when they appeal to disarmament as the cause which compelled them to
adopt a policy of prudence (that is to say, cowardice). Here, again, the
contrary is the truth. Disarmament is the result of their lack of
spirit.
Therefore the problem of restoring Germany's power is not a question of
how can we manufacture arms but rather a question of how we can produce
that spirit which enables a people to bear arms. Once this spirit
prevails among a people then it will find a thousand ways, each of which
leads to the necessary armament. But a coward will not fire even a
single shot when attacked though he may be armed with ten pistols. For
him they are of less value than a blackthorn in the hands of a man of
courage.
The problem of re-establishing the political power of our nation is
first of all a problem of restoring the instinct of national
self-preservation for if no other reason than that every preparatory
step in foreign policy and every foreign judgment on the worth of a
State has been proved by experience to be grounded not on the material
size of the armament such a State may possess but rather on the moral
capacity for resistance which such a State has or is believed to have.
The question whether or not a nation be desirable as an ally is not so
much determined by the inert mass of arms which it has at hand but by
the obvious presence of a sturdy will to national self-preservation and
a heroic courage which will fight through to the last breath. For an
alliance is not made between arms but between men.
The British nation will therefore be considered as the most valuable
ally in the world as long as it can be counted upon to show that
brutality and tenacity in its government, as well as in the spirit of
the broad masses, which enables it to carry through to victory any
struggle that it once enters upon, no matter how long such a struggle
may last, or however great the sacrifice that may be necessary or
whatever the means that have to be employed; and all this even though
the actual military equipment at hand may be utterly inadequate when
compared with that of other nations.
Once it is understood that the restoration of Germany is a question of
reawakening the will to political self-preservation we shall see quite
clearly that it will not be enough to win over those elements that are
already national-minded but that the deliberately anti-national masses
must be converted to believe in the national ideals.
A young movement that aims at re-establishing a German State with full
sovereign powers will therefore have to make the task of winning over
the broad masses a special objective of its plan of campaign. Our
so-called 'national bourgeoisie' are so lamentably supine, generally
speaking, and their national spirit appears so feckless, that we may
feel sure they will offer no serious resistance against a vigorous
national foreign--or domestic policy. Even though the narrow-minded
German bourgeoisie should keep up a passive resistance when the hour of
deliverance is at hand, as they did in Bismarck's time, we shall never
have to fear any active resistance on their part, because of their
recognized proverbial cowardice.
It is quite different with the masses of our population, who are imbued
with ideas of internationalism. Through the primitive roughness of their
natures they are disposed to accept the preaching of violence, while at
the same time their Jewish leaders are more brutal and ruthless. They
will crush any attempt at a German revival, just as they smashed the
German Army by striking at it from the rear. Above all, these organized
masses will use their numerical majority in this Parliamentarian State
not only to hinder any national foreign policy, but also to prevent
Germany from restoring her political power and therewith her prestige
abroad. Thus she becomes excluded from the ranks of desirable allies.
For it is not we ourselves alone who are aware of the handicap that
results from the existence of fifteen million Marxists, democrats,
pacifists and followers of the Centre, in our midst, but foreign nations
also recognize this internal burden which we have to bear and take it
into their calculations when estimating the value of a possible alliance
with us. Nobody would wish to form an alliance with a State where the
active portion of the population is at least passively opposed to any
resolute foreign policy.
The situation is made still worse by reason of the fact that the leaders
of those parties which were responsible for the national betrayal are
ready to oppose any and every attempt at a revival, simply because they
want to retain the positions they now hold. According to the laws that
govern human history it is inconceivable that the German people could
resume the place they formerly held without retaliating on those who
were both cause and occasion of the collapse that involved the ruin of
our State. Before the judgment seat of posterity November 1918 will not
be regarded as a simple rebellion but as high treason against the
country.
Therefore it is not possible to think of re-establishing German
sovereignty and political independence without at the same time
reconstructing a united front within the nation, by a peaceful
conversion of the popular will.
Looked at from the standpoint of practical ways and means, it seems
absurd to think of liberating Germany from foreign bondage as long as
the masses of the people are not willing to support such an ideal of
freedom. After carefully considering this problem from the purely
military point of view, everybody, and in particular every officer, will
agree that a war cannot be waged against an outside enemy by battalions
of students; but that, together with the brains of the nation, the
physical strength of the nation is also necessary. Furthermore it must
be remembered that the nation would be robbed of its irreplaceable
assets by a national defence in which only the intellectual circles, as
they are called, were engaged. The young German intellectuals who joined
the volunteer regiments and fell on the battlefields of Flanders in the
autumn of 1914 were bitterly missed later on. They were the dearest
treasure which the nation possessed and their loss could not be made
good in the course of the war. And it is not only the struggle itself
which could not be waged if the working masses of the nation did not
join the storm battalions, but the necessary technical preparations
could not be made without a unified will and a common front within the
nation itself. Our nation which has to exist disarmed, under the
thousand eyes appointed by the Versailles Peace Treaty, cannot make any
technical preparations for the recovery of its freedom and human
independence until the whole army of spies employed within the country
is cut down to those few whose inborn baseness would lead them to betray
anything and everything for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver. But
we can deal with such people. The millions, however, who are opposed to
every kind of national revival simply because of their political
opinions, constitute an insurmountable obstacle. At least the obstacle
will remain insurmountable as long as the cause of their opposition,
which is international Marxism, is not overcome and its teachings
banished from both their hearts and heads.
From whatever point of view we may examine the possibility of recovering
our independence as a State and a people, whether we consider the
problem from the standpoint of technical rearmament or from that of the
actual struggle itself, the necessary pre-requisite always remains the
same. This pre-requisite is that the broad masses of the people must
first be won over to accept the principle of our national independence.
If we do not regain our external freedom every step forward in domestic
reform will at best be an augmentation of our productive powers for the
benefit of those nations that look upon us as a colony to be exploited.
The surplus produced by any so-called improvement would only go into the
hands of our international controllers and any social betterment would
at best increase the product of our labour in favour of those people. No
cultural progress can be made by the German nation, because such
progress is too much bound up with the political independence and
dignity of a people.
Therefore, as we can find a satisfactory solution for the problem of
Germany's future only by winning over the broad masses of our people for
the support of the national idea, this work of education must be
considered the highest and most important task to be accomplished by a
movement which does not strive merely to satisfy the needs of the moment
but considers itself bound to examine in the light of future results
everything it decides to do or refrain from doing.
As early as 1919 we were convinced that the nationalization of the
masses would have to constitute the first and paramount aim of the new
movement. From the tactical standpoint, this decision laid a certain
number of obligations on our shoulders.
(1) No social sacrifice could be considered too great in this effort to
win over the masses for the national revival.
In the field of national economics, whatever concessions are granted
to-day to the employees are negligible when compared with the benefit to
be reaped by the whole nation if such concessions contribute to bring
back the masses of the people once more to the bosom of their own
nation. Nothing but meanness and shortsightedness, which are
characteristics that unfortunately are only too prevalent among our
employers, could prevent people from recognizing that in the long run no
economic improvement and therefore no rise in profits are possible
unless internal solidarity be restored among the bulk of the people who
make up our nation.
If the German trades unions had defended the interests of the
working-classes uncompromisingly during the War; if even during the War
they had used the weapon of the strike to force the industrialists--who
were greedy for higher dividends--to grant the demands of the workers
for whom the unions acted; if at the same time they had stood up as good
Germans for the defence of the nation as stoutly as for their own
claims, and if they had given to their country what was their country's
due--then the War would never have been lost. How ludicrously
insignificant would all, and even the greatest, economic concession have
been in face of the tremendous importance of such a victory.
For a movement which would restore the German worker to the German
people it is therefore absolutely necessary to understand clearly that
economic sacrifices must be considered light in such cases, provided of
course that they do not go the length of endangering the independence
and stability of the national economic system.
(2) The education of the masses along national lines can be carried out
only indirectly, by improving their social conditions; for only by such
a process can the economic conditions be created which enable everybody
to share in the cultural life of the nation.
(3) The nationalization of the broad masses can never be achieved by
half-measures--that is to say, by feebly insisting on what is called the
objective side of the question--but only by a ruthless and devoted
insistence on the one aim which must be achieved. This means that a
people cannot be made 'national' according to the signification attached
to that word by our bourgeois class to-day--that is to say, nationalism
with many reservations--but national in the vehement and extreme sense.
Poison can be overcome only by a counter-poison, and only the supine
bourgeois mind could think that the Kingdom of Heaven can be attained by
a compromise.
The broad masses of a nation are not made up of professors and
diplomats. Since these masses have only a poor acquaintance with
abstract ideas, their reactions lie more in the domain of the feelings,
where the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes
are implanted. They are susceptible only to a manifestation of strength
which comes definitely either from the positive or negative side, but
they are never susceptible to any half-hearted attitude that wavers
between one pole and the other. The emotional grounds of their attitude
furnish the reason for their extraordinary stability. It is always more
difficult to fight successfully against Faith than against knowledge.
Love is less subject to change than respect. Hatred is more lasting than
mere aversion. And the driving force which has brought about the most
tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific
teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion
which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged
them to action.
Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open
the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a feckless
attitude, but a determined will, backed up by force, when necessary.
(4) The soul of the masses can be won only if those who lead the
movement for that purpose are determined not merely to carry through the
positive struggle for their own aims but are also determined to destroy
the enemy that opposes them.
When they see an uncompromising onslaught against an adversary the
people have at all times taken this as a proof that right is on the side
of the active aggressor; but if the aggressor should go only half-way
and fail to push home his success by driving his opponent entirely from
the scene of action, the people will look upon this as a sign that the
aggressor is uncertain of the justice of his own cause and his half-way
policy may even be an acknowledgment that his cause is unjust.
The masses are but a part of Nature herself. Their feeling is such that
they cannot understand mutual hand-shakings between men who are declared
enemies. Their wish is to see the stronger side win and the weaker wiped
out or subjected unconditionally to the will of the stronger.
The nationalization of the masses can be successfully achieved only if,
in the positive struggle to win the soul of the people, those who spread
the international poison among them are exterminated.
(5) All the great problems of our time are problems of the moment and
are only the results of certain definite causes. And among all those
there is only one that has a profoundly causal significance. This is the
problem of preserving the pure racial stock among the people. Human
vigour or decline depends on the blood. Nations that are not aware of
the importance of their racial stock, or which neglect to preserve it,
are like men who would try to educate the pug-dog to do the work of the
greyhound, not understanding that neither the speed of the greyhound nor
the imitative faculties of the poodle are inborn qualities which cannot
be drilled into the one or the other by any form of training. A people
that fails to preserve the purity of its racial blood thereby destroys
the unity of the soul of the nation in all its manifestations. A
disintegrated national character is the inevitable consequence of a
process of disintegration in the blood. And the change which takes place
in the spiritual and creative faculties of a people is only an effect of
the change that has modified its racial substance.
If we are to free the German people from all those failings and ways of
acting which do not spring from their original character, we must first
get rid of those foreign germs in the national body which are the cause
of its failings and false ways.
The German nation will never revive unless the racial problem is taken
into account and dealt with. The racial problem furnishes the key not
only to the understanding of human history but also to the understanding
of every kind of human culture.
(6) By incorporating in the national community the masses of our people
who are now in the international camp we do not thereby mean to renounce
the principle that the interests of the various trades and professions
must be safeguarded. Divergent interests in the various branches of
labour and in the trades and professions are not the same as a division
between the various classes, but rather a feature inherent in the
economic situation. Vocational grouping does not clash in the least with
the idea of a national community, for this means national unity in
regard to all those problems that affect the life of the nation as such.
To incorporate in the national community, or simply the State, a stratum
of the people which has now formed a social class the standing of the
higher classes must not be lowered but that of the lower classes must be
raised. The class which carries through this process is never the higher
class but rather the lower one which is fighting for equality of rights.
The bourgeoisie of to-day was not incorporated in the State through
measures enacted by the feudal nobility but only through its own energy
and a leadership that had sprung from its own ranks.
The German worker cannot be raised from his present standing and
incorporated in the German folk-community by means of goody-goody
meetings where people talk about the brotherhood of the people, but
rather by a systematic improvement in the social and cultural life of
the worker until the yawning abyss between him and the other classes can
be filled in. A movement which has this for its aim must try to recruit
its followers mainly from the ranks of the working class. It must
include members of the intellectual classes only in so far as such
members have rightly understood and accepted without reserve the ideal
towards which the movement is striving. This process of transformation
and reunion cannot be completed within ten or twenty years. It will take
several generations, as the history of such movements has shown.
The most difficult obstacle to the reunion of our contemporary worker in
the national folk-community does not consist so much in the fact that he
fights for the interests of his fellow-workers, but rather in the
international ideas with which he is imbued and which are of their
nature at variance with the ideas of nationhood and fatherland. This
hostile attitude to nation and fatherland has been inculcated by the
leaders of the working class. If they were inspired by the principle of
devotion to the nation in all that concerns its political and social
welfare, the trades unions would make those millions of workers most
valuable members of the national community, without thereby affecting
their own constant struggle for their economic demands.
A movement which sincerely endeavours to bring the German worker back
into his folk-community, and rescue him from the folly of
internationalism, must wage a vigorous campaign against certain notions
that are prevalent among the industrialists. One of these notions is
that according to the concept of the folk-community, the employee is
obliged to surrender all his economic rights to the employer and,
further, that the workers would come into conflict with the
folk-community if they should attempt to defend their own just and vital
interests. Those who try to propagate such a notion are deliberate
liars. The idea of a folk-community does not impose any obligations on
the one side that are not imposed on the other.
A worker certainly does something which is contrary to the spirit of
folk-community if he acts entirely on his own initiative and puts
forward exaggerated demands without taking the common good into
consideration or the maintenance of the national economic structure. But
an industrialist also acts against the spirit of the folk-community if
he adopts inhuman methods of exploitation and misuses the working forces
of the nation to make millions unjustly for himself from the sweat of
the workers. He has no right to call himself 'national' and no right to
talk of a folk-community, for he is only an unscrupulous egoist who sows
the seeds of social discontent and provokes a spirit of conflict which
sooner or later must be injurious to the interests of the country.
The reservoir from which the young movement has to draw its members will
first of all be the working masses. Those masses must be delivered from
the clutches of the international mania. Their social distress must be
eliminated. They must be raised above their present cultural level,
which is deplorable, and transformed into a resolute and valuable factor
in the folk-community, inspired by national ideas and national
sentiment.
If among those intellectual circles that are nationalist in their
outlook men can be found who genuinely love the people and look forward
eagerly to the future of Germany, and at the same time have a sound
grasp of the importance of a struggle whose aim is to win over the soul
of the masses, such men are cordially welcomed in the ranks of our
movement, because they can serve as a valuable intellectual force in the
work that has to be done. But this movement can never aim at recruiting
its membership from the unthinking herd of bourgeois voters. If it did
so the movement would be burdened with a mass of people whose whole
mentality would only help to paralyse the effort of our campaign to win
the mass of the people. In theory it may be very fine to say that the
broad masses ought to be influenced by a combined leadership of the
upper and lower social strata within the framework of the one movement;
but, notwithstanding all this, the fact remains that though it may be
possible to exercise a psychological influence on the bourgeois classes
and to arouse some enthusiasm or even awaken some understanding among
them by our public demonstrations, their traditional characteristics
cannot be changed. In other words, we could not eliminate from the
bourgeois classes the inefficiency and supineness which are part of a
tradition that has developed through centuries. The difference between
the cultural levels of the two groups and between their respective
attitudes towards social-economic questions is still so great that it
would turn out a hindrance to the movement the moment the first
enthusiasm aroused by our demonstrations calmed down.
Finally, it is not part of our programme to transform the nationalist
camp itself, but rather to win over those who are anti-national in their
outlook. It is from this viewpoint that the strategy of the whole
movement must finally be decided.
(7) This one-sided but accordingly clear and definite attitude must be
manifested in the propaganda of the movement; and, on the other hand,
this is absolutely necessary to make the propaganda itself effective.
If propaganda is to be of service to the movement it must be addressed
to one side alone; for if it should vary the direction of its appeal it
will not be understood in the one camp or may be rejected by the other,
as merely insisting on obvious and uninteresting truisms; for the
intellectual training of the two camps that come into question here has
been very different.
Even the manner in which something is presented and the tone in which
particular details are emphasized cannot have the same effect in those
two strata that belong respectively to the opposite extremes of the
social structure. If the propaganda should refrain from using primitive
forms of expression it will not appeal to the sentiments of the masses.
If, on the other hand, it conforms to the crude sentiments of the masses
in its words and gestures the intellectual circles will be averse to it
because of its roughness and vulgarity. Among a hundred men who call
themselves orators there are scarcely ten who are capable of speaking
with effect before an audience of street-sweepers, locksmiths and
navvies, etc., to-day and expound the same subject with equal effect
to-morrow before an audience of university professors and students.
Among a thousand public speakers there may be only one who can speak
before a composite audience of locksmiths and professors in the same
hall in such a way that his statements can be fully comprehended by each
group while at the same time he effectively influences both and awakens
enthusiasm, on the one side as well as on the other, to hearty applause.
But it must be remembered that in most cases even the most beautiful
idea embodied in a sublime theory can be brought home to the public only
through the medium of smaller minds. The thing that matters here is not
the vision of the man of genius who created the great idea but rather
the success which his apostles achieve in shaping the expression of this
idea so as to bring it home to the minds of the masses.
Social-Democracy and the whole Marxist movement were particularly
qualified to attract the great masses of the nation, because of the
uniformity of the public to which they addressed their appeal. The more
limited and narrow their ideas and arguments, the easier it was for the
masses to grasp and assimilate them; for those ideas and arguments were
well adapted to a low level of intelligence.
These considerations led the new movement to adopt a clear and simple
line of policy, which was as follows:
In its message as well as in its forms of expression the propaganda must
be kept on a level with the intelligence of the masses, and its value
must be measured only by the actual success it achieves.
At a public meeting where the great masses are gathered together the
best speaker is not he whose way of approaching a subject is most akin
to the spirit of those intellectuals who may happen to be present, but
the speaker who knows how to win the hearts of the masses.
An educated man who is present and who finds fault with an address
because he considers it to be on an intellectual plane that is too low,
though he himself has witnessed its effect on the lower intellectual
groups whose adherence has to be won, only shows himself completely
incapable of rightly judging the situation and therewith proves that he
can be of no use in the new movement. Only intellectuals can be of use
to a movement who understand its mission and its aims so well that they
have learned to judge our methods of propaganda exclusively by the
success obtained and never by the impression which those methods made on
the intellectuals themselves. For our propaganda is not meant to serve
as an entertainment for those people who already have a nationalist
outlook, but its purpose is to win the adhesion of those who have
hitherto been hostile to national ideas and who are nevertheless of our
own blood and race.
In general, those considerations of which I have given a brief summary
in the chapter on 'War Propaganda' became the guiding rules and
principles which determined the kind of propaganda we were to adopt in
our campaign and the manner in which we were to put it into practice.
The success that has been obtained proves that our decision was right.
(8) The ends which any political reform movement sets out to attain can
never be reached by trying to educate the public or influence those in
power but only by getting political power into its hands. Every idea
that is meant to move the world has not only the right but also the
obligation of securing control of those means which will enable the idea
to be carried into effect. In this world success is the only rule of
judgment whereby we can decide whether such an undertaking was right or
wrong. And by the word 'success' in this connection I do not mean such a
success as the mere conquest of power in 1918 but the successful issue
whereby the common interests of the nation have been served. A COUP
D'ETAT cannot be considered successful if, as many empty-headed
government lawyers in Germany now believe, the revolutionaries succeeded
in getting control of the State into their hands but only if, in
comparison with the state of affairs under the old regime, the lot of
the nation has been improved when the aims and intentions on which the
revolution was based have been put into practice. This certainly does
not apply to the German Revolution, as that movement was called, which
brought a gang of bandits into power in the autumn of 1918.
But if the conquest of political power be a requisite preliminary for
the practical realization of the ideals that inspire a reform movement,
then any movement which aims at reform must, from the very first day of
its activity, be considered by its leaders as a movement of the masses
and not as a literary tea club or an association of philistines who meet
to play ninepins.
(9) The nature and internal organization of the new movement make it
anti-parliamentarian. That is to say, it rejects in general and in its
own structure all those principles according to which decisions are to
be taken on the vote of the majority and according to which the leader
is only the executor of the will and opinion of others. The movement
lays down the principle that, in the smallest as well as in the greatest
problems, one person must have absolute authority and bear all
responsibility.
In our movement the practical consequences of this principle are the
following:
The president of a large group is appointed by the head of the group
immediately above his in authority. He is then the responsible leader of
his group. All the committees are subject to his authority and not he to
theirs. There is no such thing as committees that vote but only
committees that work. This work is allotted by the responsible leader,
who is the president of the group. The same principle applies to the
higher organizations--the Bezirk (district), the KREIS (urban circuit)
and the GAU (the region). In each case the president is appointed from
above and is invested with full authority and executive power. Only the
leader of the whole party is elected at the general meeting of the
members. But he is the sole leader of the movement. All the committees
are responsible to him, but he is not responsible to the committees. His
decision is final, but he bears the whole responsibility of it. The
members of the movement are entitled to call him to account by means of
a new election, or to remove him from office if he has violated the
principles of the movement or has not served its interests adequately.
He is then replaced by a more capable man. who is invested with the same
authority and obliged to bear the same responsibility.
One of the highest duties of the movement is to make this principle
imperative not only within its own ranks but also for the whole State.
The man who becomes leader is invested with the highest and unlimited
authority, but he also has to bear the last and gravest responsibility.
The man who has not the courage to shoulder responsibility for his
actions is not fitted to be a leader. Only a man of heroic mould can
have the vocation for such a task.
Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the multitude. They
are exclusively the work of personal genius and personal efficiency.
Because of this principle, our movement must necessarily be
anti-parliamentarian, and if it takes part in the parliamentary
institution it is only for the purpose of destroying this institution
from within; in other words, we wish to do away with an institution
which we must look upon as one of the gravest symptoms of human decline.
(10) The movement steadfastly refuses to take up any stand in regard to
those problems which are either outside of its sphere of political work
or seem to have no fundamental importance for us. It does not aim at
bringing about a religious reformation, but rather a political
reorganization of our people. It looks upon the two religious
denominations as equally valuable mainstays for the existence of our
people, and therefore it makes war on all those parties which would
degrade this foundation, on which the religious and moral stability of
our people is based, to an instrument in the service of party interests.
Finally, the movement does not aim at establishing any one form of State
or trying to destroy another, but rather to make those fundamental
principles prevail without which no republic and no monarchy can exist
for any length of time. The movement does not consider its mission to be
the establishment of a monarchy or the preservation of the Republic but
rather to create a German State.
The problem concerning the outer form of this State, that is to say, its
final shape, is not of fundamental importance. It is a problem which
must be solved in the light of what seems practical and opportune at the
moment.
Once a nation has understood and appreciated the great problems that
affect its inner existence, the question of outer formalities will never
lead to any internal conflict.
(11) The problem of the inner organization of the movement is not one of
principle but of expediency.
The best kind of organization is not that which places a large
intermediary apparatus between the leadership of the movement and the
individual followers but rather that which works successfully with the
smallest possible intermediary apparatus. For it is the task of such an
organization to transmit a certain idea which originated in the brain of
one individual to a multitude of people and to supervise the manner in
which this idea is being put into practice.
Therefore, from any and every viewpoint, the organization is only a
necessary evil. At best it is only a means of reaching certain ends. The
worst happens when it becomes an end in itself.
Since the world produces more mechanical than intelligent beings, it
will always be easier to develop the form of an organization than its
substance; that is to say, the ideas which it is meant to serve.
The march of any idea which strives towards practical fulfilment, and in
particular those ideas which are of a reformatory character, may be
roughly sketched as follows:
A creative idea takes shape in the mind of somebody who thereupon feels
himself called upon to transmit this idea to the world. He propounds his
faith before others and thereby gradually wins a certain number of
followers. This direct and personal way of promulgating one's ideas
among one's contemporaries is the most natural and the most ideal. But
as the movement develops and secures a large number of followers it
gradually becomes impossible for the original founder of the doctrine on
which the movement is based to carry on his propaganda personally among
his innumerable followers and at the same time guide the course of the
movement.
According as the community of followers increases, direct communication
between the head and the individual followers becomes impossible. This
intercourse must then take place through an intermediary apparatus
introduced into the framework of the movement. Thus ideal conditions of
inter-communication cease, and organization has to be introduced as a
necessary evil. Small subsidiary groups come into existence, as in the
political movement, for example, where the local groups represent the
germ-cells out of which the organization develops later on.
But such sub-divisions must not be introduced into the movement until
the authority of the spiritual founder and of the school he has created
are accepted without reservation. Otherwise the movement would run the
risk of becoming split up by divergent doctrines. In this connection too
much emphasis cannot be laid on the importance of having one geographic
centre as the chief seat of the movement. Only the existence of such a
seat or centre, around which a magic charm such as that of Mecca or Rome
is woven, can supply a movement with that permanent driving force which
has its sources in the internal unity of the movement and the
recognition of one head as representing this unity.
When the first germinal cells of the organization are being formed care
must always be taken to insist on the importance of the place where the
idea originated. The creative, moral and practical greatness of the
place whence the movement went forth and from which it is governed must
be exalted to a supreme symbol, and this must be honoured all the more
according as the original cells of the movement become so numerous that
they have to be regrouped into larger units in the structure of the
organization.
When the number of individual followers became so large that direct
personal contact with the head of the movement was out of the question,
then we had to form those first local groups. As those groups multiplied
to an extraordinary number it was necessary to establish higher cadres
into which the local groups were distributed. Examples of such cadres in
the political organization are those of the region (GAU) and the
district (BEZIRK).
Though it may be easy enough to maintain the original central authority
over the lowest groups, it is much more difficult to do so in relation
to the higher units of organization which have now developed. And yet we
must succeed in doing this, for this is an indispensable condition if
the unity of the movement is to be guaranteed and the idea of it carried
into effect.
Finally, when those larger intermediary organizations have to be
combined in new and still higher units it becomes increasingly difficult
to maintain over them the absolute supremacy of the original seat of the
movement and the school attached to it.
Consequently the mechanical forms of an organization must only be
introduced if and in so far as the spiritual authority and the ideals of
the central seat of the organization are shown to be firmly established.
In the political sphere it may often happen that this supremacy can be
maintained only when the movement has taken over supreme political
control of the nation.
Having taken all these considerations into account, the following
principles were laid down for the inner structure of the movement:
(a) That at the beginning all activity should be concentrated in one
town: namely, Munich. That a band of absolutely reliable followers
should be trained and a school founded which would subsequently help to
propagate the idea of the movement. That the prestige of the movement,
for the sake of its subsequent extension, should first be established
here through gaining as many successful and visible results as possible
in this one place. To secure name and fame for the movement and its
leader it was necessary, not only to give in this one town a striking
example to shatter the belief that the Marxist doctrine was invincible
but also to show that a counter-doctrine was possible.
(b) That local groups should not be established before the supremacy of
the central authority in Munich was definitely established and
acknowledged.
(c) That District, Regional, and Provincial groups should be formed only
after the need for them has become evident and only after the supremacy
of the central authority has been satisfactorily guaranteed.
Further, that the creation of subordinate organisms must depend on
whether or not those persons can be found who are qualified to undertake
the leadership of them.
Here there were only two solutions:
(a) That the movement should acquire the necessary funds to attract and
train intelligent people who would be capable of becoming leaders. The
personnel thus obtained could then be systematically employed according
as the tactical situation and the necessity for efficiency demanded.
This solution was the easier and the more expedite. But it demanded
large financial resources; for this group of leaders could work in the
movement only if they could be paid a salary.
(b) Because the movement is not in a position to employ paid officials
it must begin by depending on honorary helpers. Naturally this solution
is slower and more difficult.
It means that the leaders of the movement have to allow vast territories
to lie fallow unless in these respective districts one of the members
comes forward who is capable and willing to place himself at the service
of the central authority for the purpose of organizing and directing the
movement in the region concerned.
It may happen that in extensive regions no such leader can be found, but
that at the same time in other regions two or three or even more persons
appear whose capabilities are almost on a level. The difficulty which
this situation involves is very great and can be overcome only with the
passing of the years.
For the establishment of any branch of the organization the decisive
condition must always be that a person can be found who is capable of
fulfilling the functions of a leader.
Just as the army and all its various units of organization are useless
if there are no officers, so any political organization is worthless if
it has not the right kind of leaders.
If an inspiring personality who has the gift of leadership cannot be
found for the organization and direction of a local group it is better
for the movement to refrain from establishing such a group than to run
the risk of failure after the group has been founded.
The will to be a leader is not a sufficient qualification for
leadership. For the leader must have the other necessary qualities.
Among these qualities will-power and energy must be considered as more
serviceable than the intellect of a genius. The most valuable
association of qualities is to be found in a combination of talent,
determination and perseverance.
(12) The future of a movement is determined by the devotion, and even
intolerance, with which its members fight for their cause. They must
feel convinced that their cause alone is just, and they must carry it
through to success, as against other similar organizations in the same
field.
It is quite erroneous to believe that the strength of a movement must
increase if it be combined with other movements of a similar kind. Any
expansion resulting from such a combination will of course mean an
increase in external development, which superficial observers might
consider as also an increase of power; but in reality the movement thus
admits outside elements which will subsequently weaken its
constitutional vigour.
Though it may be said that one movement is identical in character with
another, in reality no such identity exists. If it did exist then
practically there would not be two movements but only one. And whatever
the difference may be, even if it consist only of the measure in which
the capabilities of the one set of leaders differ from those of the
other, there it is. It is against the natural law of all development to
couple dissimilar organisms, or the law is that the stronger must
overcome the weaker and, through the struggle necessary for such a
conquest, increase the constitutional vigour and effective strength of
the victor.
By amalgamating political organizations that are approximately alike,
certain immediate advantages may be gained, but advantages thus gained
are bound in the long run to become the cause of internal weaknesses
which will make their appearance later on.
A movement can become great only if the unhampered development of its
internal strength be safeguarded and steadfastly augmented, until
victory over all its competitors be secured.
One may safely say that the strength of a movement and its right to
existence can be developed only as long as it remains true to the
principle that struggle is a necessary condition of its progress and
that its maximum strength will be reached only as soon as complete
victory has been won.
Therefore a movement must not strive to obtain successes that will be
only immediate and transitory, but it must show a spirit of
uncompromising perseverance in carrying through a long struggle which
will secure for it a long period of inner growth.
All those movements which owe their expansion to a so-called combination
of similar organisms, which means that their external strength is due to
a policy of compromise, are like plants whose growth is forced in a
hothouse. They shoot up externally but they lack that inner strength
which enables the natural plant to grow into a tree that will withstand
the storms of centuries.
The greatness of every powerful organization which embodies a creative
idea lies in the spirit of religious devotion and intolerance with which
it stands out against all others, because it has an ardent faith in its
own right. If an idea is right in itself and, furnished with the
fighting weapons I have mentioned, wages war on this earth, then it is
invincible and persecution will only add to its internal strength.
The greatness of Christianity did not arise from attempts to make
compromises with those philosophical opinions of the ancient world which
had some resemblance to its own doctrine, but in the unrelenting and
fanatical proclamation and defence of its own teaching.
The apparent advance that a movement makes by associating itself with
other movements will be easily reached and surpassed by the steady
increase of strength which a doctrine and its organization acquires if
it remains independent and fights its own cause alone.
(13) The movement ought to educate its adherents to the principle that
struggle must not be considered a necessary evil but as something to be
desired in itself. Therefore they must not be afraid of the hostility
which their adversaries manifest towards them but they must take it as a
necessary condition on which their whole right to existence is based.
They must not try to avoid being hated by those who are the enemies of
our people and our philosophy of life, but must welcome such hatred.
Lies and calumnies are part of the method which the enemy employs to
express his chagrin.
The man who is not opposed and vilified and slandered in the Jewish
Press is not a staunch German and not a true National Socialist. The
best rule whereby the sincerity of his convictions, his character and
strength of will, can be measured is the hostility which his name
arouses among the mortal enemies of our people.
The followers of the movement, and indeed the whole nation, must be
reminded again and again of the fact that, through the medium of his
newspapers, the Jew is always spreading falsehood and that if he tells
the truth on some occasions it is only for the purpose of masking some
greater deceit, which turns the apparent truth into a deliberate
falsehood. The Jew is the Great Master of Lies. Falsehood and duplicity
are the weapons with which he fights.
Every calumny and falsehood published by the Jews are tokens of honour
which can be worn by our comrades. He whom they decry most is nearest to
our hearts and he whom they mortally hate is our best friend.
If a comrade of ours opens a Jewish newspaper in the morning and does
not find himself vilified there, then he has spent yesterday to no
account. For if he had achieved something he would be persecuted,
slandered, derided and abused. Those who effectively combat this mortal
enemy of our people, who is at the same time the enemy of all Aryan
peoples and all culture, can only expect to arouse opposition on the
part of this race and become the object of its slanderous attacks.
When these truths become part of the flesh and blood, as it were, of our
members, then the movement will be impregnable and invincible.
(14) The movement must use all possible means to cultivate respect for
the individual personality. It must never forget that all human values
are based on personal values, and that every idea and achievement is the
fruit of the creative power of one man. We must never forget that
admiration for everything that is great is not only a tribute to one
creative personality but that all those who feel such admiration become
thereby united under one covenant.
Nothing can take the place of the individual, especially if the
individual embodies in himself not the mechanical element but the
element of cultural creativeness. No pupil can take the place of the
master in completing a great picture which he has left unfinished; and
just in the same way no substitute can take the place of the great poet
or thinker, or the great statesman or military general. For the source
of their power is in the realm of artistic creativeness. It can never be
mechanically acquired, because it is an innate product of divine grace.
The greatest revolutions and the greatest achievements of this world,
its greatest cultural works and the immortal creations of great
statesmen, are inseparably bound up with one name which stands as a
symbol for them in each respective case. The failure to pay tribute to
one of those great spirits signifies a neglect of that enormous source
of power which lies in the remembrance of all great men and women.
The Jew himself knows this best. He, whose great men have always been
great only in their efforts to destroy mankind and its civilization,
takes good care that they are worshipped as idols. But the Jew tries to
degrade the honour in which nations hold their great men and women. He
stigmatizes this honour as 'the cult of personality'.
As soon as a nation has so far lost its courage as to submit to this
impudent defamation on the part of the Jews it renounces the most
important source of its own inner strength. This inner force cannot
arise from a policy of pandering to the masses but only from the worship
of men of genius, whose lives have uplifted and ennobled the nation
itself.
When men's hearts are breaking and their souls are plunged into the
depths of despair, their great forebears turn their eyes towards them
from the dim shadows of the past--those forebears who knew how to
triumph over anxiety and affliction, mental servitude and physical
bondage--and extend their eternal hands in a gesture of encouragement to
despairing souls. Woe to the nation that is ashamed to clasp those
hands.
During the initial phase of our movement our greatest handicap was the
fact that none of us were known and our names meant nothing, a fact
which then seemed to some of us to make the chances of final success
problematical. Our most difficult task then was to make our members
firmly believe that there was a tremendous future in store for the
movement and to maintain this belief as a living faith; for at that time
only six, seven or eight persons came to hear one of our speakers.
Consider that only six or seven poor devils who were entirely unknown
came together to found a movement which should succeed in doing what the
great mass-parties had failed to do: namely, to reconstruct the German
REICH, even in greater power and glory than before. We should have been
very pleased if we were attacked or even ridiculed. But the most
depressing fact was that nobody paid any attention to us whatever. This
utter lack of interest in us caused me great mental pain at that time.
When I entered the circle of those men there was not yet any question of
a party or a movement. I have already described the impression which was
made on me when I first came into contact with that small organization.
Subsequently I had time, and also the occasion, to study the form of
this so-called party which at first had made such a woeful impression.
The picture was indeed quite depressing and discouraging. There was
nothing, absolutely nothing at all. There was only the name of a party.
And the committee consisted of all the party members. Somehow or other
it seemed just the kind of thing we were about to fight against--a
miniature parliament. The voting system was employed. When the great
parliament cried until they were hoarse--at least they shouted over
problems of importance--here this small circle engaged in interminable
discussions as to the form in which they might answer the letters which
they were delighted to have received.
Needless to say, the public knew nothing of all this. In Munich nobody
knew of the existence of such a party, not even by name, except our few
members and their small circle of acquaintances.
Every Wednesday what was called a committee meeting was held in one of
the cafés, and a debate was arranged for one evening each week. In the
beginning all the members of the movement were also members of the
committee, therefore the same persons always turned up at both meetings.
The first step that had to be taken was to extend the narrow limits of
this small circle and get new members, but the principal necessity was
to utilize all the means at our command for the purpose of making the
movement known.
We chose the following methods: We decided to hold a monthly meeting to
which the public would be invited. Some of the invitations were
typewritten, and some were written by hand. For the first few meetings
we distributed them in the streets and delivered them personally at
certain houses. Each one canvassed among his own acquaintances and tried
to persuade some of them to attend our meetings. The result was
lamentable.
I still remember once how I personally delivered eighty of these
invitations and how we waited in the evening for the crowds to come.
After waiting in vain for a whole hour the chairman finally had to open
the meeting. Again there were only seven people present, the old
familiar seven.
We then changed our methods. We had the invitations written with a
typewriter in a Munich stationer's shop and then multigraphed them.
The result was that a few more people attended our next meeting. The
number increased gradually from eleven to thirteen to seventeen, to
twenty-three and finally to thirty-four. We collected some money within
our own circle, each poor devil giving a small contribution, and in that
way we raised sufficient funds to be able to advertise one of our
meetings in the MUNICH OBSERVER, which was still an independent paper.
This time we had an astonishing success. We had chosen the Munich
HOFBRÄU HAUS KELLER (which must not be confounded with the Munich
HOFBRÄU HAUS FESTSAAL) as our meeting-place. It was a small hall and
would accommodate scarcely more than 130 people. To me, however, the
hall seemed enormous, and we were all trembling lest this tremendous
edifice would remain partly empty on the night of the meeting.
At seven o'clock 111 persons were present, and the meeting was opened. A
Munich professor delivered the principal address, and I spoke after him.
That was my first appearance in the role of public orator. The whole
thing seemed a very daring adventure to Herr Harrer, who was then
chairman of the party. He was a very decent fellow; but he had an
A PRIORI conviction that, although I might have quite a number of good
qualities, I certainly did not have a talent for public speaking. Even
later he could not be persuaded to change his opinion. But he was
mistaken. Twenty minutes had been allotted to me for my speech on this
occasion, which might be looked upon as our first public meeting.
I talked for thirty minutes, and what I always had felt deep down in my
heart, without being able to put it to the test, was here proved to be
true: I could make a good speech. At the end of the thirty minutes it
was quite clear that all the people in the little hall had been
profoundly impressed. The enthusiasm aroused among them found its first
expression in the fact that my appeal to those present brought us
donations which amounted to three hundred marks. That was a great relief
for us. Our finances were at that time so meagre that we could not
afford to have our party prospectus printed, or even leaflets. Now we
possessed at least the nucleus of a fund from which we could pay the
most urgent and necessary expenses.
But the success of this first larger meeting was also important from
another point of view. I had already begun to introduce some young and
fresh members into the committee. During the long period of my military
service I had come to know a large number of good comrades whom I was
now able to persuade to join our party. All of them were energetic and
disciplined young men who, through their years of military service, had
been imbued with the principle that nothing is impossible and that where
there's a will there's a way.
The need for this fresh blood supply became evident to me after a few
weeks of collaboration with the new members. Herr Harrer, who was then
chairman of the party, was a journalist by profession, and as such he
was a man of general knowledge. But as leader of the party he had one
very serious handicap: he could not speak to the crowd. Though he did
his work conscientiously, it lacked the necessary driving force,
probably for the reason that he had no oratorical gifts whatsoever. Herr
Drexler, at that time chairman of the Munich local group, was a simple
working man. He, too, was not of any great importance as a speaker.
Moreover, he was not a soldier. He had never done military service, even
during the War. So that this man who was feeble and diffident by nature
had missed the only school which knows how to transform diffident and
weakly natures into real men. Therefore neither of those two men were of
the stuff that would have enabled them to stir up an ardent and
indomitable faith in the ultimate triumph of the movement and to brush
aside, with obstinate force and if necessary with brutal ruthlessness,
all obstacles that stood in the path of the new idea. Such a task could
be carried out only by men who had been trained, body and soul, in those
military virtues which make a man, so to speak, agile as a greyhound,
tough as leather, and hard as Krupp steel.
At that time I was still a soldier. Physically and mentally I had the
polish of six years of service, so that in the beginning this circle
must have looked on me as quite a stranger. In common with my army
comrades, I had forgotten such phrases as: "That will not go", or "That
is not possible", or "We ought not to take such a risk; it is too
dangerous".
The whole undertaking was of its very nature dangerous. At that time
there were many parts of Germany where it would have been absolutely
impossible openly to invite people to a national meeting that dared to
make a direct appeal to the masses. Those who attended such meetings
were usually dispersed and driven away with broken heads. It certainly
did not call for any great qualities to be able to do things in that
way. The largest so-called bourgeois mass meetings were accustomed to
dissolve, and those in attendance would run away like rabbits when
frightened by a dog as soon as a dozen communists appeared on the scene.
The Reds used to pay little attention to those bourgeois organizations
where only babblers talked. They recognized the inner triviality of such
associations much better than the members themselves and therefore felt
that they need not be afraid of them. On the contrary, however, they
were all the more determined to use every possible means of annihilating
once and for all any movement that appeared to them to be a danger to
their own interests. The most effective means which they always employed
in such cases were terror and brute force.
The Marxist leaders, whose business consisted in deceiving and
misleading the public, naturally hated most of all a movement whose
declared aim was to win over those masses which hitherto had been
exclusively at the service of international Marxism in the Jewish and
Stock Exchange parties. The title alone, 'German Labour party',
irritated them. It could easily be foreseen that at the first opportune
moment we should have to face the opposition of the Marxist despots, who
were still intoxicated with their triumph in 1918.
People in the small circles of our own movement at that time showed a
certain amount of anxiety at the prospect of such a conflict. They
wanted to refrain as much as possible from coming out into the open,
because they feared that they might be attacked and beaten. In their
minds they saw our first public meetings broken up and feared that the
movement might thus be ruined for ever. I found it difficult to defend
my own position, which was that the conflict should not be evaded but
that it should be faced openly and that we should be armed with those
weapons which are the only protection against brute force. Terror cannot
be overcome by the weapons of the mind but only by counter-terror. The
success of our first public meeting strengthened my own position. The
members felt encouraged to arrange for a second meeting, even on a
larger scale.
Some time in October 1919 the second larger meeting took place in the
EBERLBRÄU KELLER. The theme of our speeches was 'Brest-Litowsk and
Versailles'. There were four speakers. I talked for almost an hour, and
the success was even more striking than at our first meeting. The number
of people who attended had grown to more than 130. An attempt to disturb
the proceedings was immediately frustrated by my comrades. The would-be
disturbers were thrown down the stairs, bearing imprints of violence on
their heads.
A fortnight later another meeting took place in the same hall. The
number in attendance had now increased to more than 170, which meant
that the room was fairly well filled. I spoke again, and once more the
success obtained was greater than at the previous meeting.
Then I proposed that a larger hall should be found. After looking around
for some time we discovered one at the other end of the town, in the
'Deutschen REICH' in the Dachauer Strasse. The first meeting at this new
rendezvous had a smaller attendance than the previous meeting. There
were just less than 140 present. The members of the committee began to
be discouraged, and those who had always been sceptical were now
convinced that this falling-off in the attendance was due to the fact
that we were holding the meetings at too short intervals. There were
lively discussions, in which I upheld my own opinion that a city with
700,000 inhabitants ought to be able not only to stand one meeting every
fortnight but ten meetings every week. I held that we should not be
discouraged by one comparative setback, that the tactics we had chosen
were correct, and that sooner or later success would be ours if we only
continued with determined perseverance to push forward on our road. This
whole winter of 1919-20 was one continual struggle to strengthen
confidence in our ability to carry the movement through to success and
to intensify this confidence until it became a burning faith that could
move mountains.
Our next meeting in the small hall proved the truth of my contention.
Our audience had increased to more than 200. The publicity effect and
the financial success were splendid. I immediately urged that a further
meeting should be held. It took place in less than a fortnight, and
there were more than 270 people present. Two weeks later we invited our
followers and their friends, for the seventh time, to attend our
meeting. The same hall was scarcely large enough for the number that
came. They amounted to more than four hundred.
During this phase the young movement developed its inner form. Sometimes
we had more or less hefty discussions within our small circle. From
various sides--it was then just the same as it is to-day--objections
were made against the idea of calling the young movement a party. I have
always considered such criticism as a demonstration of practical
incapability and narrow-mindedness on the part of the critic. Those
objections have always been raised by men who could not differentiate
between external appearances and inner strength, but tried to judge the
movement by the high-sounding character of the name attached to it. To
this end they ransacked the vocabulary of our ancestors, with
unfortunate results.
At that time it was very difficult to make the people understand that
every movement is a party as long as it has not brought its ideals to
final triumph and thus achieved its purpose. It is a party even if it
give itself a thousand difterent names.
Any person who tries to carry into practice an original idea whose
realization would be for the benefit of his fellow men will first have
to look for disciples who are ready to fight for the ends he has in
view. And if these ends did not go beyond the destruction of the party
system and therewith put a stop to the process of disintegration, then
all those who come forward as protagonists and apostles of such an ideal
are a party in themselves as long as their final goal is reached. It is
only hair-splitting and playing with words when these antiquated
theorists, whose practical success is in reverse ratio to their wisdom,
presume to think they can change the character of a movement which is at
the same time a party, by merely changing its name.
On the contrary, it is entirely out of harmony with the spirit of the
nation to keep harping on that far-off and forgotten nomenclature which
belongs to the ancient Germanic times and does not awaken any distinct
association in our age. This habit of borrowing words from the dead past
tends to mislead the people into thinking that the external trappings of
its vocabulary are the important feature of a movement. It is really a
mischievous habit; but it is quite prevalent nowadays.
At that time, and subsequently, I had to warn followers repeatedly
against these wandering scholars who were peddling Germanic folk-lore
and who never accomplished anything positive or practical, except to
cultivate their own superabundant self-conceit. The new movement must
guard itself against an influx of people whose only recommendation is
their own statement that they have been fighting for these very same
ideals during the last thirty or forty years.
Now if somebody has fought for forty years to carry into effect what he
calls an idea, and if these alleged efforts not only show no positive
results but have not even been able to hinder the success of the
opposing party, then the story of those forty years of futile effort
furnishes sufficient proof for the incompetence of such a protagonist.
People of that kind are specially dangerous because they do not want to
participate in the movement as ordinary members. They talk rather of the
leading positions which would be the only fitting posts for them, in
view of their past work and also so that they might be enabled to carry
on that work further. But woe to a young movement if the conduct of it
should fall into the hands of such people. A business man who has been
in charge of a great firm for forty years and who has completely ruined
it through his mismanagement is not the kind of person one would
recommend for the founding of a new firm. And it is just the same with a
new national movement. Nobody of common sense would appoint to a leading
post in such a movement some Teutonic Methuselah who had been
ineffectively preaching some idea for a period of forty years, until
himself and his idea had entered the stage of senile decay.
Furthermore, only a very small percentage of such people join a new
movement with the intention of serving its end unselfishly and helping
in the spread of its principles. In most cases they come because they
think that, under the aegis of the new movement, it will be possible for
them to promulgate their old ideas to the misfortune of their new
listeners. Anyhow, nobody ever seems able to describe what exactly these
ideas are.
It is typical of such persons that they rant about ancient Teutonic
heroes of the dim and distant ages, stone axes, battle spears and
shields, whereas in reality they themselves are the woefullest poltroons
imaginable. For those very same people who brandish Teutonic tin swords
that have been fashioned carefully according to ancient models and wear
padded bear-skins, with the horns of oxen mounted over their bearded
faces, proclaim that all contemporary conflicts must be decided by the
weapons of the mind alone. And thus they skedaddle when the first
communist cudgel appears. Posterity will have little occasion to write a
new epic on these heroic gladiators.
I have seen too much of that kind of people not to feel a profound
contempt for their miserable play-acting. To the masses of the nation
they are just an object of ridicule; but the Jew finds it to his own
interest to treat these folk-lore comedians with respect and to prefer
them to real men who are fighting to establish a German State. And yet
these comedians are extremely proud of themselves. Notwithstanding their
complete fecklessness, which is an established fact, they pretend to
know everything better than other people; so much so that they make
themselves a veritable nuisance to all sincere and honest patriots, to
whom not only the heroism of the past is worthy of honour but who also
feel bound to leave examples of their own work for the inspiration of
the coming generation.
Among those people there were some whose conduct can be explained by
their innate stupidity and incompetence; but there are others who have a
definite ulterior purpose in view. Often it is difficult to distinguish
between the two classes. The impression which I often get, especially of
those so-called religious reformers whose creed is grounded on ancient
Germanic customs, is that they are the missionaries and protégés of
those forces which do not wish to see a national revival taking place in
Germany. All their activities tend to turn the attention of the people
away from the necessity of fighting together in a common cause against
the common enemy, namely the Jew. Moreover, that kind of preaching
induces the people to use up their energies, not in fighting for the
common cause, but in absurd and ruinous religious controversies within
their own ranks. There are definite grounds that make it absolutely
necessary for the movement to be dominated by a strong central force
which is embodied in the authoritative leadership. In this way alone is
it possible to counteract the activity of such fatal elements. And that
is just the reason why these folk-lore Ahasueruses are vigorously
hostile to any movement whose members are firmly united under one leader
and one discipline. Those people of whom I have spoken hate such a
movement because it is capable of putting a stop to their mischief.
It was not without good reason that when we laid down a clearly defined
programme for the new movement we excluded the word VÖLKISCH from it.
The concept underlying the term VÖLKISCH cannot serve as the basis of a
movement, because it is too indefinite and general in its application.
Therefore, if somebody called himself VÖLKISCH such a designation could
not be taken as the hall-mark of some definite, party affiliation.
Because this concept is so indefinite from the practical viewpoint, it
gives rise to various interpretations and thus people can appeal to it
all the more easily as a sort of personal recommendation. Whenever such
a vague concept, which is subject to so many interpretations, is
admitted into a political movement it tends to break up the disciplined
solidarity of the fighting forces. No such solidarity can be maintained
if each individual member be allowed to define for himself what he
believes and what he is willing to do.
One feels it a disgrace when one notices the kind of people who float
about nowadays with the VÖLKISCH symbol stuck in their buttonholes, and
at the same time to notice how many people have various ideas of their
own as to the significance of that symbol. A well-known professor in
Bavaria, a famous combatant who fights only with the weapons of the mind
and who boasts of having marched against Berlin--by shouldering the
weapons of the mind, of course--believes that the word VÖLKISCH is
synonymous with 'monarchical'. But this learned authority has hitherto
neglected to explain how our German monarchs of the past can be
identified with what we generally mean by the word VÖLKISCH to-day. I am
afraid he will find himself at a loss if he is asked to give a precise
answer. For it would be very difficult indeed to imagine anything less
VÖLKISCH than most of those German monarchical States were. Had they
been otherwise they would not have disappeared; or if they were
VÖLKISCH, then the fact of their downfall may be taken as evidence that
the VÖLKISCH outlook on the world (WELTANSCHAUUNG) is a false outlook.
Everybody interprets this concept in his own way. But such multifarious
opinions cannot be adopted as the basis of a militant political
movement. I need not call attention to the absolute lack of worldly
wisdom, and especially the failure to understand the soul of the nation,
which is displayed by these Messianic Precursors of the Twentieth
Century. Sufficient attention has been called to those people by the
ridicule which the left-wing parties have bestowed on them. They allow
them to babble on and sneer at them.
I do not set much value on the friendship of people who do not succeed
in getting disliked by their enemies. Therefore, we considered the
friendship of such people as not only worthless but even dangerous to
our young movement. That was the principal reason why we first called
ourselves a PARTY. We hoped that by giving ourselves such a name we
might scare away a whole host of VÖLKISCH dreamers. And that was the
reason also why we named our Party, THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMAN LABOUR
PARTY.
The first term, Party, kept away all those dreamers who live in the past
and all the lovers of bombastic nomenclature, as well as those who went
around beating the big drum for the VÖLKISCH idea. The full name of the
Party kept away all those heroes whose weapon is the sword of the spirit
and all those whining poltroons who take refuge behind their so-called
'intelligence' as if it were a kind of shield.
It was only to be expected that this latter class would launch a massed
attack against us after our movement had started; but, of course, it was
only a pen-and-ink attack, for the goose-quill is the only weapon which
these VÖLKISCH lancers wield. We had declared one of our principles
thus: "We shall meet violence with violence in our own defence".
Naturally that principle disturbed the equanimity of the knights of the
pen. They reproached us bitterly not only for what they called our crude
worship of the cudgel but also because, according to them, we had no
intellectual forces on our side. These charlatans did not think for a
moment that a Demosthenes could be reduced to silence at a mass-meeting
by fifty idiots who had come there to shout him down and use their fists
against his supporters. The innate cowardice of the pen-and-ink
charlatan prevents him from exposing himself to such a danger, for he
always works in safe retirement and never dares to make a noise or come
forward in public.
Even to-day I must warn the members of our young movement in the
strongest possible terms to guard against the danger of falling into the
snare of those who call themselves 'silent workers'. These 'silent
workers' are not only a whitelivered lot but are also, and always will
be, ignorant do-nothings. A man who is aware of certain happenings and
knows that a certain danger threatens, and at the same time sees a
certain remedy which can be employed against it, is in duty bound not to
work in silence but to come into the open and publicly fight for the
destruction of the evil and the acceptance of his own remedy. If he does
not do so, then he is neglecting his duty and shows that he is weak in
character and that he fails to act either because of his timidity, or
indolence or incompetence. Most of these 'silent workers' generally
pretend to know God knows what. Not one of them is capable of any real
achievement, but they keep on trying to fool the world with their
antics. Though quite indolent, they try to create the impression that
their 'silent work' keeps them very busy. To put it briefly, they are
sheer swindlers, political jobbers who feel chagrined by the honest work
which others are doing. When you find one of these VÖLKISCH moths
buzzing over the value of his 'silent work' you may be sure that you are
dealing with a fellow who does no productive work at all but steals from
others the fruits of their honest labour.
In addition to all this one ought to note the arrogance and conceited
impudence with which these obscurantist idlers try to tear to pieces the
work of other people, criticizing it with an air of superiority, and
thus playing into the hands of the mortal enemy of our people.
Even the simplest follower who has the courage to stand on the table in
some beer-hall where his enemies are gathered, and manfully and openly
defend his position against them, achieves a thousand times more than
these slinking hypocrites. He at least will convert one or two people to
believe in the movement. One can examine his work and test its
effectiveness by its actual results. But those knavish swindlers--who
praise their own 'silent work' and shelter themselves under the cloak of
anonymity, are just worthless drones, in the truest sense of the term,
and are utterly useless for the purpose of our national reconstruction.
In the beginning of 1920 I put forward the idea of holding our first
mass meeting. On this proposal there were differences of opinion amongst
us. Some leading members of our party thought that the time was not ripe
for such a meeting and that the result might be detrimental. The Press
of the Left had begun to take notice of us and we were lucky enough in
being able gradually to arouse their wrath. We had begun to appear at
other meetings and to ask questions or contradict the speakers, with the
natural result that we were shouted down forthwith. But still we thereby
gained some of our ends. People began to know of our existence and the
better they understood us, the stronger became their aversion and their
enmity. Therefore we might expect that a large contingent of our friends
from the Red Camp would attend our first mass meeting.
I fully realized that our meeting would probably be broken up. But we
had to face the fight; if not now, then some months later. Since the
first day of our foundation we were resolved to secure the future of the
movement by fighting our way forward in a spirit of blind faith and
ruthless determination. I was well acquainted with the mentality of all
those who belonged to the Red Camp, and I knew quite well that if we
opposed them tooth and nail not only would we make an impression on them
but that we even might win new followers for ourselves. Therefore I felt
that we must decide on a policy of active opposition.
Herr Harrer was then chairman of our party. He did not see eye to eye
with me as to the opportune time for our first mass meeting. Accordingly
he felt himself obliged to resign from the leadership of the movement,
as an upright and honest man. Herr Anton Drexler took his place. I kept
the work of organizing the propaganda in my own hands and I listened to
no compromise in carrying it out.
We decided on February 24th 1920 as the date for the first great popular
meeting to be held under the aegis of this movement which was hitherto
unknown.
I made all the preparatory arrangements personally. They did not take
very long. The whole apparatus of our organization was set in motion for
the purpose of being able to secure a rapid decision as to our policy.
Within twenty-four hours we had to decide on the attitude we should take
in regard to the questions of the day which would be put forward at the
mass meeting. The notices which advertised the meeting had to bring
these points before the public. In this direction we were forced to
depend on the use of posters and leaflets, the contents of which and the
manner in which they were displayed were decided upon in accordance with
the principles which I have already laid down in dealing with propaganda
in general. They were produced in a form which would appeal to the
crowd. They concentrated on a few points which were repeated again and
again. The text was concise and definite, an absolutely dogmatic form of
expression being used. We distributed these posters and leaflets with a
dogged energy and then we patiently waited for the effect they would
produce.
For our principal colour we chose red, as it has an exciting effect on
the eye and was therefore calculated to arouse the attention of our
opponents and irritate them. Thus they would have to take notice of
us--whether they liked it or not--and would not forget us.
One result of our tactics was to show up clearly the close political
fraternization that existed also here in Bavaria between the Marxists
and the Centre Party. The political party that held power in Bavaria,
which was the Bavarian People's Party (affiliated with the Centre Party)
did its best to counteract the effect which our placards were having on
the 'Red' masses. Thus they made a definite step to fetter our
activities. If the police could find no other grounds for prohibiting
our placards, then they might claim that we were disturbing the traffic
in the streets. And thus the so-called German National People's Party
calmed the anxieties of their 'Red' allies by completely prohibiting
those placards which proclaimed a message that was bringing back to the
bosom of their own people hundreds of thousands of workers who had been
misled by international agitators and incensed against their own nation.
These placards bear witness to the bitterness of the struggle in which
the young movement was then engaged. Future generations will find in
these placards a documentary proof of our determination and the justice
of our own cause. And these placards will also prove how the so-called
national officials took arbitrary action to strangle a movement that did
not please them, because it was nationalizing the broad masses of the
people and winning them back to their own racial stock.
These placards will also help to refute the theory that there was then a
national government in Bavaria and they will afford documentary
confirmation of the fact that if Bavaria remained nationally-minded
during the years 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1923, this was not due to a
national government but it was because the national spirit gradually
gained a deeper hold on the people and the Government was forced to
follow public feeling. The Government authorities themselves did
everything in their power to hamper this process of recovery and make it
impossible. But in this connection two officials must be mentioned as
outstanding exceptions.
Ernst Pöhner was Chief of Police at the time. He had a loyal counsellor
in Dr. Frick, who was his chief executive official. These were the only
men among the higher officials who had the courage to place the
interests of their country before their own interests in holding on to
their jobs. Of those in responsible positions Ernst Pöhner was the only
one who did not pay court to the mob but felt that his duty was towards
the nation as such and was ready to risk and sacrifice everything, even
his personal livelihood, to help in the restoration of the German
people, whom he dearly loved. For that reason he was a bitter thorn in
the side of the venal group of Government officials. It was not the
interests of the nation or the necessity of a national revival that
inspired or directed their conduct. They simply truckled to the wishes
of the Government, so as to secure their daily bread for themselves, but
they had no thought whatsoever for the national welfare that had been
entrusted to their care.
Above all, Pöhner was one of those people who, in contradistinction to
the majority of our so-called defenders of the authority of the State,
did not fear to incur the enmity of the traitors to the country and the
nation but rather courted it as a mark of honour and honesty. For such
men the hatred of the Jews and Marxists and the lies and calumnies they
spread, were their only source of happiness in the midst of the national
misery. Pöhner was a man of granite loyalty. He was like one of the
ascetic characters of the classical era and was at the same time that
kind of straightforward German for whom the saying 'Better dead than a
slave' is not an empty phrase but a veritable heart's cry.
In my opinion he and his collaborator, Dr. Frick, are the only men
holding positions then in Bavaria who have the right to be considered as
having taken active part in the creation of a national Bavaria.
Before holding our first great mass meeting it was necessary not only to
have our propaganda material ready but also to have the main items of
our programme printed.
In the second volume of this book I shall give a detailed account of the
guiding principles which we then followed in drawing up our programme.
Here I will only say that the programme was arranged not merely to set
forth the form and content of the young movement but also with an eye to
making it understood among the broad masses. The so-called intellectual
circles made jokes and sneered at it and then tried to criticize it. But
the effect of our programme proved that the ideas which we then held
were right.
During those years I saw dozens of new movements arise and disappear
without leaving a trace behind. Only one movement has survived. It is
the National Socialist German Labour Party. To-day I am more convinced
than ever before that, though they may combat us and try to paralyse our
movement, and though pettifogging party ministers may forbid us the
right of free speech, they cannot prevent the triumph of our ideas. When
the present system of statal administration and even the names of the
political parties that represent it will be forgotten, the programmatic
basis of the National Socialist movement will supply the groundwork on
which the future State will be built.
The meetings which we held before January 1920 had enabled us to collect
the financial means that were necessary to have our first pamphlets and
posters and programmes printed.
I shall bring the first part of this book to a close by referring to our
first great mass meeting, because that meeting marked the occasion on
which our framework as a small party had to be broken up and we started
to become the most powerful factor of this epoch in the influence we
exercised on public opinion. At that time my chief anxiety was that we
might not fill the hall and that we might have to face empty benches. I
myself was firmly convinced that if only the people would come this day
would turn out a great success for the young movement. That was my
feeling as I waited impatiently for the hour to come.
It had been announced that the meeting would begin at 7.30. A
quarter-of-an-hour before the opening time I walked through the chief
hall of the Hofbräuhaus on the PLATZ in Munich and my heart was nearly
bursting with joy. The great hall--for at that time it seemed very big
to me--was filled to overflowing. Nearly 2,000 people were present. And,
above all, those people had come whom we had always wished to reach.
More than half the audience consisted of persons who seemed to be
communists or independents. Our first great demonstration was destined,
in their view, to come to an abrupt end.
But things happened otherwise. When the first speaker had finished I got
up to speak. After a few minutes I was met with a hailstorm of
interruptions and violent encounters broke out in the body of the hall.
A handful of my loyal war comrades and some other followers grappled
with the disturbers and restored order in a little while. I was able to
continue my speech. After half an hour the applause began to drown the
interruptions and the hootings. Then interruptions gradually ceased and
applause took their place. When I finally came to explain the
twenty-five points and laid them, point after point, before the masses
gathered there and asked them to pass their own judgment on each point,
one point after another was accepted with increasing enthusiasm. When
the last point was reached I had before me a hall full of people united
by a new conviction, a new faith and a new will.
Nearly four hours had passed when the hall began to clear. As the masses
streamed towards the exits, crammed shoulder to shoulder, shoving and
pushing, I knew that a movement was now set afoot among the German
people which would never pass into oblivion.
A fire was enkindled from whose glowing heat the sword would be
fashioned which would restore freedom to the German Siegfried and bring
back life to the German nation.
Beside the revival which I then foresaw, I also felt that the Goddess of
Vengeance was now getting ready to redress the treason of the 9th of
November, 1918. The hall was emptied. The movement was on the march.
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